Strong & Fast

Weighted pull-up percentile

Your weighted pull-up ranked against all adults of your age and sex — and against NCAA Division I athletes. Dead hang to chin over the bar, no kip. Enter added weight (0 for bodyweight) and reps. We score your estimated one-rep max — bodyweight plus added weight, scaled up for reps — so 15 bodyweight reps at 157 lb counts as roughly a 230 lb single.

1 Your profile

Age and bodyweight are required. Height improves the grip-strength estimate.

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2 Your tests

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Enter what you know. Gray numbers are examples; leave untested fields blank.

StrengthLifts, pulling and grip

This is one test of the full battery. Get your overall athleticism rank across strength, power, agility and endurance.

Weighted pull-up standards by age — men

Result needed to beat the given share of all men in each age group, for a bodyweight of 179 lb (the calculator adjusts for yours).

Age10th25th50th75th90th95th99th
18-29140 lb160 lb190 lb225 lb255 lb270 lb310 lb
30-39135 lb155 lb185 lb220 lb245 lb265 lb305 lb
40-49130 lb145 lb175 lb205 lb230 lb245 lb285 lb
50-59115 lb130 lb155 lb185 lb210 lb220 lb255 lb
60-69100 lb115 lb135 lb165 lb185 lb195 lb225 lb

Modeled — estimated from indirect evidence; treat as an informed estimate. Modeled from pull-up studies in students, soldiers, recruits and firefighters. The share of adults who can do one strict pull-up (about 60% of young men, 8% of young women) is an informed assumption.

Weighted pull-up standards by age — women

Result needed to beat the given share of all women in each age group, for a bodyweight of 153 lb (the calculator adjusts for yours).

Age10th25th50th75th90th95th99th
18-2970 lb85 lb100 lb125 lb145 lb160 lb195 lb
30-3970 lb80 lb100 lb120 lb145 lb160 lb185 lb
40-4965 lb75 lb90 lb110 lb130 lb145 lb175 lb
50-5955 lb65 lb80 lb100 lb120 lb130 lb155 lb
60-6950 lb55 lb70 lb85 lb100 lb110 lb135 lb

Modeled — estimated from indirect evidence; treat as an informed estimate. Modeled from pull-up studies in students, soldiers, recruits and firefighters. The share of adults who can do one strict pull-up (about 60% of young men, 8% of young women) is an informed assumption.

Weighted pull-up — NCAA Division I athletes

Pooled across sports with published testing data, weighted by the number of D1 athletes in each sport.

10th25th50th75th90th95th99th
Men190 lb225 lb270 lb310 lb350 lb370 lb415 lb
Women115 lb140 lb165 lb190 lb215 lb225 lb255 lb

Men: Modeled — estimated from indirect evidence; treat as an informed estimate. Rough pooled all-sport estimate informed by strict pull-up repetitions from 53 D1 FCS football players and checked against measured weighted pull-ups in trained college men, special-operations police and elite rugby players. Football body mass, repetition conversion and sport participation inform the model, with explicit assumptions about unmeasured relationships and other sports; direct pooled-D1 percentiles were not found.

Women: Modeled — estimated from indirect evidence; treat as an informed estimate. Rough pooled estimate anchored to measured weighted pull-up strength in college women and checked through sensitivity analysis against mixed-sex D1 swimmer repetitions. No sex-specific pooled-D1 weighted-pull-up distribution was found.

Weighted pull-up questions

What is a good weighted pull-up for a 30-year-old man?

For a 30-year-old man of median US size (179 lb), 185 lb beats half of them, 220 lb reaches the 75th percentile, and 250 lb reaches the 90th of all men that age. The calculator adjusts these for your own bodyweight.

What is a good weighted pull-up for a 30-year-old woman?

For a 30-year-old woman of median US size (153 lb), 100 lb beats half of them, 120 lb reaches the 75th percentile, and 145 lb reaches the 90th of all women that age. The calculator adjusts these for your own bodyweight.

How does that compare with D1 athletes?

Division I is a different population: our estimated median NCAA Division I man is at 270 lb, which would be the 95th percentile among all men aged 18-29; and our estimated median NCAA Division I woman is at 165 lb, which would be the 96th percentile among all women aged 18-29. The D1 comparison is raw — no age or size adjustment — so it is you against the athletes as they are.

How accurate are these weighted pull-up percentiles?

Modeled — estimated from indirect evidence; treat every number here as an informed estimate, not a measurement. Modeled from pull-up studies in students, soldiers, recruits and firefighters. The share of adults who can do one strict pull-up (about 60% of young men, 8% of young women) is an informed assumption. Modeled percentiles have no validated error margin. Results past the 99th percentile are shown as 99+ because the data cannot support more precision.

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