Over 40 and male? Start doing push-ups

If you’re a middle-aged man capable of doing more than 40 push-ups, chances are your risk of experiencing cardiovascular disease (CVD) is low. In fact, your ability to do 40 push-ups has been identified as a cost-free method for clinicians to assess CVD risk.

This was outlined in a new study published in JAMA Network Open, which found that active, middle-aged men able to complete more than 40 push-ups had a significantly lower risk of CVD outcomes — including diagnoses of coronary artery disease and major events such as heart failure — during 10 years of follow-up, compared with those who were able to do fewer than 10 push-ups during the baseline exam.

“Our findings provide evidence that push-up capacity could be an easy, no-cost method to help assess cardiovascular disease risk in almost any setting. Surprisingly, push-up capacity was more strongly associated with cardiovascular disease risk than the results of submaximal treadmill tests,” said first author Justin Yang, occupational medicine resident in the Department of Environmental Health at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Objective assessments of physical fitness are considered strong predictors of health status; however, most current tools such as treadmill tests are too expensive and time-consuming to use during routine exams. This is the first known study to report an association between push-up capacity and subsequent cardiovascular disease outcomes.

The researchers analysed health data from 1104 active male firefighters collected from 2000 to 2010. Their mean age was 39.6 and mean body mass index (BMI) was 28.7. Participants’ push-up capacity and submaximal treadmill exercise tolerance were measured at the start of the study, and each man subsequently completed annual physical examinations and health and medical questionnaires.

During the 10-year study period, 37 CVD-related outcomes were reported. All but one occurred in men who completed 40 or fewer push-ups during the baseline exam. The researchers calculated that men able to do more than 40 push-ups had a 96% reduced risk of CVD events compared with those who were able to do fewer than 10 push-ups.

Push-up capacity was more strongly associated with lower incidence of cardiovascular disease events than was aerobic capacity as estimated by a submaximal treadmill exercise test.

However, the authors note that because the study population consisted of middle-aged, occupationally active men, the results may not be generalisable to women or to men of other ages or who are less active.

Image credit: ©stock.adobe.com/au/Moriz