Dr. Rhonda Patrick instagram post...

Association Between Push-up Exercise Capacity and Future Cardiovascular Events Among Active Adult Men 2-15-2019

I fall into the 10 push-ups and 0 pull-ups category

I rode a really tall horse recently and I was a little worried if I had lost some of my upper body strength but happily, I pulled myself right up and got on with no problems whatsoever.

Yeah, that's not always easy -- especially if your mount won't stand still, or tries to bite

Back in the day I could grab the mane and swing myself right up on the bareback horse riding off. Last time I tried that (just to see if still could) my body quit swinging up about half why there

Never could do pull-ups, but I was quite a pear shape back when.

What I could never do is the rope climb in gym..nope. I got about 2 feet off of the ground and told PE teacher, no way no how.

I posted on this study in my journal a couple of days ago. I think maybe it comes down to pushups being a fair proxy for body fat percentage rather than having to do with strength as such--and of course, low body fat percentage is going to correlate with less fatty liver or visceral fat, better so than bmi would.

My friend's kid, vegetarian at the time, was talking about how many body weight reps he could do of various exercises. There's a reason why gymnasts are extremely lean. Lean people can still have insulin resistance and type II etc. of course, but it's much less likely.

I could never do it, either. Later, in my 30s, I belonged to a gym that had floor to ceiling ropes and I could go all the way to the top. None of my PE teachers had ever taught me how to do it. 1) It's much easier barefoot. 2) You have to use your foot as an anchor with the rope wrapped around it. Now I blame the PE teachers for not having actually instructed us.

You're right, they never showed us how to do it either. We were just supposed to know how to do it.
They were just doing the yearly fitness testing when they also weigh everyone.

Exercise hint: As an all-purpose mini-workout, push-ups are pretty good. Every part of the body gets involved, especially mid-section (core). I include these in my BTN ("better than nothing") days.

Hint #2: Push-ups are hard on the back for us pear-shaped women with not a lot of arm strength. Be sure and check form tips online. I do them from the knees only. Keep eyes looking forward. Rest and stretch.

Hint #3: Planks are equally good, and I like them better. Planks also increase heart rate and produce a sweat.

Have fun!

P. S. Rope climb? Pull-ups? No way.

Tom Naughton discussed this study. His take is pushups are proxy for age.

Fat Head Movie's talks about the study

Looks like the study authors sort of agree with me and Tom (more directly with Tom, because I wondered about pushups as a proxy more for actual leanness versus bmi, which itself is just a loose proxy for leanness). Firemen are a cohort where muscle pushing people into the "obese" category probably comes up more than usual.

^ I agree with Dr. Rhonda Patrick

Just wondering how many push ups Bob Harper could do, especially 10 years before his heart attack? Wonder how many he can do now?

I know, I know, supposedly his heart problem is genetic, but it just goes to show yet another reason that how many push ups you can do is just a pointless correlation.