mcours2006

Saw it on the morning show today, so naturally I attempted to do 40 push ups...

https://www.livescience.com/64789-pu...rt-health.html

Cyclist0108

My wrists hurt just thinking about it.

Chances are anyone who can whip off 40 push-ups at middle age (or beyond) is in very good condition relative to the average population (and moi).

Seattle Forrest

I was in a car accident in my 20s and dislocated my sternoclavicular joint. Pushups aggravate it, so I don't do them.

fstrnu

I stopped reading at 40 vs 10 push-ups. That's a wide spread and if you can't to 10 pushups you're probably already dead.

fstrnu

I wonder what the (however loose) translation, i.e. percent body weight) would be to bench press, i.e. if I want to try but still have use of my wrist for the rest of my life.

Carbonfiberboy 

Yeah, that's good. Just to see, I got down and did 27 just now. Did benches yesterday afternoon, which probably didn't help. Plus I never do pushups anymore. In the Army, I always thought that "give me 20" was some kind of reward. Wrist problems? Why would that be? Shoulder impingement is a more likely stopper. I have a touch of that but get by OK.

Kind of a funny study, what with the designed-in confounders like BMI. Maybe BMI without the pushups would have had the same result? We don't know. Like with BMI and LDL-C. Same result?

wolfchild

I love doing various types of push ups, but I don't think any one exercise should be used as a measure to determine a persons heart health or general fitness... Any type of vigorous resistance training will provide cardiovascular benefits, it doesn't mater what type of exercise it is.

wolfchild

That's what push up handles are for.

AlmostTrick

We're talking one handed push-ups, right?

gregf83 

With a 20 lb two year old on your back.

fstrnu

Ok we got 27. Do I hear 28? First one to forty gets a virtual high-five.

When I'm not doing my season strength training, I habitually do three sets of 10 very slow (~6 sec) push-ups. With my OCD, there's about zero chance of this not becoming a goal if I can't do this already.

wolfchild

Some push up variations are harder than others and there is no way that anybody could get 40 in one shot. What type of push ups are we talking about ??...wide grip, medium grip, narrow grip, diamond push ups, push ups with feet elevated, suspended push ups, weighted push ups, half rom or full rom, slow or fast or paused ?? . The amount of reps you do in one shot means nothing.

mcours2006

Here's the protocol outline in the USA Today article:

"The men, who had an average age of 40 and an average body mass index (BMI) of 28.7 at the start of the study, performed both the push-up test and an exercise tolerance test on the treadmill. The participants were instructed to do push-ups in time with a metronome set at 80 beats per minute until they “reached 80, missed 3 or more beats of the metronome, or stopped owing to exhaustion.”

If I'm reading this correctly then essentially you've to complete the 40 pushups in 32 seconds or less. I consider myself in pretty decent physical shape for a forty-something male, and probably not exaggerating if I put myself in the top 99% for my age, but I'd have trouble completing this feat. I can probably bang out 30 reps in 30 seconds without breaking a much sweat, but 40 in 32? No way...or maybe I'm not as fit as I thought I was.

So unless I'm misreading the sentence in bold, that seems to be a pretty lofty standard for a test for cardio-vascular health.

rosefarts

I could do 50 in my early 20s. It wasn't that bad either. I could also do 20 pullups wearing 20lbs . Seemed like that strength was plentiful and would never leave me.

20 years later, a job, kids, and an auto immune disorder that targets my arms and upper back... I'm happy to crank out 10 pushups and I don't always make it that far. I haven't been able to do a single unassisted pull-up in 4 years.

BMI, VO2 max, lactic threshold, body fat percentage, average number of sick days, or just point me up a mountain and say go. For my situation, I'd take exception to having my fitness based on upper body strength.

gregf83 

I think they're giving you 1 min to complete 40 pushups. The metronome ticks one beat up and one beat down. You get two minutes to do 80 push-ups.

It's probaby a reasonable test if you do push-ups on a reasonably regular basis. Firefighters obviously need to maintain better overall strength than someone with a desk job. I think it wouldn't be too difficult to train to do 40 push-ups. https://hundredpushups.com/ provides a program to do 100 push-ups after 6 wks of training.

rubiksoval

I've never had a problem doing 30-40 pushups off the couch, essentially.

Pull ups, on the other hand...

AlmostTrick

This makes more sense. If you race too fast, you're not likely to go fully down and/or up.

I did the plan for a least 6 weeks, got up to about 60 and lost interest. Now many years later, I can do 25-30 depending on the day. Thanks to this thread, I'm going to ramp up the training so I can make the all important 40! I'm 58 years old.

gregf83 

Right behind you at 59. Check back in 6 wks

caloso

Same. It's weird. You'd think it might be the opposite from pulling on the bars.

wolfchild

My style of doing push ups is different ..I do them with my feet elevated on the chair, hands on the ground on top of small push up handles plus an extra 35 pounds of weight on my body, there is no way that I could ever do 40 reps in one shot in one minute. It takes me 3 sets with one minute rest in between to get a total of 40 reps. Maybe some day I will try regular push ups with only my bodyweight and see how many I can do, so far I've never tried my max reps.

wolfchild

With regular push ups you're only lifting about 60% of your bodyweight... Pull ups require you to pull 100% of your bodyweight, pulling and pushing use totally different muscle groups. I think pull ups are a much better way to measure upper body strength than push ups, majority of people struggle a lot more with pull ups than with push ups.

mcours2006

I didn't have a metronome but did use an analog clock while doing 40 in 54 seconds. Not easy still. No way I could do 80 in two minutes.

One hundred push ups is not difficult to do with a short recovery between sets of 10 or 20.

DrIsotope

My left wrist is still borked from going down on the bike 2 weeks ago, so I could do like... zero push-ups right now. Guess I'm gon' die. Oh well.

fstrnu

Yes

fstrnu

or 64 seconds with a beat for both down and up?