
The Power of One Push-Up - rafaelc
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/06/push-ups-body-weight-bmi/592834/
======
ASTP001
These measures may be good indicators, until people optimize for them
specifically. It reminds me of algorithm questions in tech interviews. They
may have been effective at finding the right candidate before it became common
knowledge to study algorithms. Measures like walking speed, grip strength, or
pushup speed may only be good health indicators, until people begin to
optimize for those measures specifically.

~~~
sharadov
Really optimize for them? Doing pushups or increasing grip strengths are not
things that you can improve in isolation. To get to even 20 pushups, you can't
be obsese, you need enough strength in your shoulders, the core has to be
strong. Similarly, grip strength, if you've just let yourself go, there is no
chance you have any strength left in your forearms.

~~~
chrisseaton
> To get to even 20 pushups, you can't be obsese

That's ridiculous - I know tons of 'obese' people who can do a hundred pushups
in one go.

~~~
abdullahkhalids
What sort of form are these people maintaining? with proper form, and slow and
controlled motion I would be very surprised if more than 1 in 1000-10,000
people could do hundred pushups in one set.

I went through the
[http://www.hundredpushups.com/](http://www.hundredpushups.com/) program when
I was at peak fitness (on multiple sports teams) and it tooks everything out
of me over 10 weeks to hit the hundred push up in one set milestone.

~~~
chrisseaton
Fifty push-ups in one go with excellent form is the base level of fitness in
the British Army (probably similar in most other armies). A hundred in one go
is a reasonable for many people to reach. Many very fit people count as obese,
especially those with the muscles to do push-ups. The Serjeant Major of the
British Army said in a TV interview that he was 'obese'.

~~~
abdullahkhalids
The percentile graph of max number of pushups is not a linear function. Its
entirely possible for a large section of population to reach 50, the same way
its possible for a large section of the population to hit the 20 second 100 m,
but for almost no one to hit the 10 second 100 m.

------
jaden
After reading that those who could do at least 40 pushups without stopping [0]
had a 96% lower risk of heart disease, I started doing pushups each day until
I could do 40. I'm surprised by how much better I feel.

[0] [https://www.livescience.com/64789-pushups-men-heart-
health.h...](https://www.livescience.com/64789-pushups-men-heart-health.html)

~~~
r0fl
How long did it take you to get to 40 consecutive pushups and what method did
you use to get there?

~~~
navbaker
Not the OP, but the method that worked for me when I was training for the
military years ago was to (situation permitting) drop down and do five push
ups every half hour for most of the day. Do that for a week, then the next
week add five more. In a few weeks you’re doing 20-30 push ups every half hour
and the maximum you become capable of doing if you have to take a fitness test
goes through the roof.

~~~
sp332
This technique is called "grease the groove" and it's useful anytime you've
plateaued on reps for an exercise.

Edit: also focus on your form!

~~~
melling
Has anyone tried it? I believe you want to try for 50% of maximum.

The technique is discussed here for pushups.

[http://www.100pushups.com/greasing-the-
groove/](http://www.100pushups.com/greasing-the-groove/)

------
kevin_b_er
BMI is highly useful. That it doesn't work for Dwayne Johnson is merely an
attempt to reject the whole of it because known edge cases don't work. We know
where it doesn't work: extreme heights and serious athletes who are enough
standard deviations of muscle mass outside the norm. For that, we can do body
fat %. But body fat% is harder to measure, so we've got a quick yardstick: It
is BMI.

BMI is rejected because it tells people they're obese and since its unhealthy,
they need to change themselves. Noone likes hearing that. The truth hurts.

You'll see these common rejections: 1\. Bodyfat loss is hard, so its claimed
as not a good measure. 2\. BMI has outliers so _mine_ being bad doesn't count.
3\. Because not being obese does not provide data about health, they attempt
to deny obesity as a poor health marker. This is almost always "you can't tell
a skinny person is unhealthy" retort as an excuse to reject obesity as
unhealthy.

They will not escape the evidence-based scientific truth that obesity is
unhealthy.

~~~
soperj
I'm 5'11 and 185. I'm in the overweight section of BMI, yet have under 10%
bodyfat. I'm definitely not an elite athlete. I used to play hockey at a
junior level, but now just bike to and from work. Every thing during my
physical is in a good to great range. No issues what so ever. Yet BMI says I'm
overweight. To me that's an issue with the index.

~~~
ericmcer
To get those #s you would need to have an extreme diet/exercise regime. 185 at
5’11 is either a lot of extra fat or muscle. If you are Sub 10% you definitely
have a super defined 8 pack and some of that weird muscle striation body
builders get. Would be very surprised if you achieved that by just biking to
work.

~~~
soperj
I have large legs (around) from all the skating growing up. Don't have a
defined 8 pack, never really had a strong core, it's mostly legs.

~~~
ericmcer
To Quote Mens Health:

"The 7% guy is definitely following a very strict regimen,” he explains. He’s
probably eliminating certain macronutrients, like being Paleo with no carbs,
and is definitely paying very close attention to what he eats.

Meanwhile the 10 to 12% guy is in constant flux—some weeks he’s at 9 percent,
others he’s at 12%. “He might have a cheat meal—splurging on wings instead of
steamed asparagus when out with the guys—but not necessarily a cheat day,”
McCall says.

Someone at 15% is having a cheat day. “He’s paying attention and making
certain decisions—no fried foods, burger without the bun, no accidental break
room pastries. But he’s not uber health conscious,” he adds."

------
whalesalad
This entire article (and most like it) can be summed up by one of its very own
sentences:

    
    
        Essentially, these quick metrics serve as surrogates that
        correlate with all kinds of factors that determine a 
        person’s overall health—which can otherwise be totally
        impractical, invasive, and expensive to measure directly.

------
dhruvkar
anecdote on pushups:

A group of friends and I just started a challenge to do 10K pushups in 1 year.

Six months ago, I tried doing a 100 pushups in 1 hour. Couldn't do it. Got
spaghetti arms, couldn't move them the next day.

After doing this challenge for 3 weeks, I can do 60/minute and can easily top
150 in one hour, without breaking a sweat. The 10K goal seems too easy now, so
setting we've set our sights on 50K for the year. It's been purely about
consistency and a smidgen of testing our limits every once in a while. There's
no schedule or set limit each day -- just as many as possible given your day.

Oh and for fun I added a Twilio/Flask app so we can text in our push-ups to a
Google spreadsheet, which sends out a daily email (through Apps Script) with a
few fun analytics (average, estimated end date etc.).

------
fedups
In the cited study, a significant difference between highest pushup group and
lowest pushup group is a mean age of 35 and 48 years, respectively. It is well
known that age is the strongest predictor of cardiovascular events.

First chart under 'figures / tables'
[https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2724778)

------
ng12
> Its inadequacy is famously evident in examples such as the human muscle-
> mound Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson qualifying as obese.

It's called an outlier.

~~~
rosser
An outlier on a meaningless metric is a meaningless data point.

~~~
neaden
To expand on this, BMI was created as a population level comparison in the
early 1800's, which it does a decent job at. It was not designed as something
to look at a single individual with, let alone diagnose a health condition.

~~~
Zenst
But the way it is used to categorise people in a blanket way in many area's is
one of concern however.

I say this as somebody who is barrel chested, short legs (28 inside leg in
inches) and large upper torso for somebody who is 6 feet 1 inch high and size
13 shoes (UK size, so size 14 in America). I always fall foul of many norm's
in society. Always failed a BMI, even when you could count my ribs. Yet come
across so many medical professionals who use it as gospel that it's almost
religious with them. Same with calori intakes.

But then society often loves to define normal and project that. Be that
imposing lark hour mentality upon night owls and leverage disdain upon them,
or just calling somebody obese because of some legacy data metric that does
not take into account that nobody is perfectly normal. Equally ignores that
muscle is heavier than fat, just picks an arbitrary weight based upon gender
and height and fills in all the blanks with norm values.

BMI as a metric needs improving - anybody aware of more refined and granular
methods that can or are being used?

~~~
neaden
Sorry if I was unclear, I agree that using BMI to categorize people is a
mistake. I think for it's original purpose of comparing two populations it has
some value. In terms of a better model Body Fat Percentage is pretty easy to
take now, at my last physical I just had to hold a little electronic device
for around 10 seconds and it gave the result.

------
melling
“Yes, how hard you can squeeze a grip meter. This was a better predictor of
mortality than blood pressure or overall physical activity. A prior study
found that grip strength among people in their 80s predicted the likelihood of
making it past 100. Even more impressive, grip strength had good predictive
ability in a study among 18-year-olds in the Swedish military on
cardiovascular death 25 years later.”

------
RickJWagner
There'll never be another push up as famous as Jack Palance's one-arm routine
during the Oscars.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g426J4Uh2m4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g426J4Uh2m4)

------
spodek
> _the number of Americans who can do a single push-up is likely only about 20
> or 30 percent_

Wow, I wonder how that percentage has changed over the lifetime of the nation,
as well as the figure globally over time.

------
Zenst
Push-ups was one area of excercise in which I would always struggle - even at
a time when I was a top competitive swimmer and also area Kendo, lots of
cicling, running. I was fit. But pushups always a struggle.

Solution - do pushups at an angle, so use a chair pushup from that (a comfy
sofar arm rests even better and perhaps safer as well). This does mean you are
using less effort, but you are still working those muscles and will be able to
gradually lower the angle. Bigger the angle, less effort (yay science). So
even those with extremely weak muscles involved in a pushup, can do them
without struggling and exerting themselves as well as possible injury trying
the usual style push ups.

TL;DR Push Ups involve muscles that you may not use in other sports and
activities. Push Ups at an angle can aid those with weak muscles who struggle
to do a normal pushup and aid them in building the muscles up to the level
that will enable them to do a normal pushup.

------
mikece
I'm a big fan of "minimum effective dose" when it comes to working out but
doing only __one __pushup is skimping...

~~~
ahuth
I don't think it's advocating for doing a single pushup. Seems to be about the
idea of simple physical tests (walking speed, number of pushups in a minute,
grip strength) being better predictors of health than BMI.

~~~
Afton
Right, and presumably are useless once people try to game them. 'Useless'
might be too strong a term, but you can't e.g. decrease your mortality by
training your grip strength.

~~~
epmaybe
So build a battery of tests and aggregate them into a 'score' of health. You
can't optimize each aspect to get the best score without actually improving
your overall health.

~~~
Afton
But the point isn't that e.g. walking fast is bad for your health, it's that
when it isn't being explicitly trained for, it is a marker of health. Once you
explicitly train it, then it stops being that marker, _even though it may
still have positive effects on your health_.

What we need, in order to understand these proxies, is an understanding of the
mechanism by which they work. Take this example: Suppose I am a smoker. I
notice that I walk very slowly because I have bad cardio vascular health. I
hear in the paper that walking slowing is a marker for death. So I train
walking fast. I get up to 'elite non-athlete'. Even though I'm still smoking.
In this case, even though I've successfully improved my health, as an
indicator, my walking speed will over-predict my health.

For grip strength it's even easier, since it seems very unlikely that actually
have a strong grip is realistically correlated with anything health related.
Rather, have significant untrained strength is probably _very_ well correlated
with a host of genetic, enviromental, and hormonal factors that would likely
be strong predictors of health.

