You know what I find shocking? The fact that, no matter how good I get at lifting barbells, pushing sleds, or stretching resistance bands, nothing humbles me in quite the same way as my own body weight. If you’ve ever done a HIIT workout, HYROX or even a mat Pilates class, you’ll know what I mean. Because between all the complex equipment-based movements, it’s the press-ups, pull-ups and burpees which really stump me. These are the moves that have me shaking by rep four, the ones which most stubbornly resist progress and which are the first to suffer when my routine slips.
It’s why I wasn’t that shocked to read that the number of press-ups we can do in a minute might give some indication of how long, and how healthily, we’ll live. But here’s the catch. The landmark Harvard study published in 2019 was - *shock* - conducted entirely on men. Healthy male firefighters, to be precise. The researchers, who studied the men over a ten-year period, found that those who could do over 40 press-ups had a 96% lower risk of heart disease than those who could do fewer than 10.
