This is some great news that I want to share with everybody. Especially newbies to physical fitness looking to build the ideal at home workout routine with easy exercises for beginners. Of course it’s about push ups and future health.
If you’ve been following anything that I’ve written, you’ll know that I’m a big fan of bodyweight exercise.
Anyway when it comes to maintaining upper body strength and conditioning, I’ve always enjoyed push ups.
I believe that any bodyweight strength training for beginners should include push ups. Or at least involve building the strength needed to eventually do them correctly.
That’s just me.
Of course there are numerous variations as well as a variety of ways to integrate the movement into your workout.
It’s great for your pectorals, deltoid muscles, triceps and core.
I try to incorporate variations of push ups into most of my warm ups. And use them on my chest days.
As a movement, it really does cover all the bases. It helps with strength, stability, balance, endurance, you name it.
Until you’ve built up a little upper body strength, it may be difficult to complete correctly.
But the great news about the push up includes the easier variations that are available while you’re building your strength.
That’s why they can be an easy exercise for beginners, just starting to workout.
I’ve got several articles in here you can check out that discuss them.
Related Article: Best Bodyweight Exercises To Build A Lean Strong Physique
As it turns out, the simple push up may be a significant indicator of future heart health as well.
That’s right. Push ups and future health. It’s all happening.
According to an article in the New York Times, push up ability is a significant fitness marker.
More specifically, it showed that men who could get through a set of 40 push ups or more were significantly less likely to experience a heart attack or other cardiopulmonary problems than those who could not complete 10.
So it looks like doing push ups at home may be a reliable way of checking on your own heart health while strengthening your upper body.
This is good news since heart scans and other kinds of stress tests can be expensive and time consuming.
Also, according to the article, most stress testing and heart tests pick up heart and cardiovascular problems after they already began.
With the push up, you have a reliable predictive indicator well in advance, to encourage you along your way to better health.
So the study involved 1500 firefighters. They reported to a clinic each year in Indiana where all the standard physical fitness tests took place.
This included a regular treadmill stress test for their endurance capacity.
The stress test appears to be the measurement that the researchers were most concerned about. Since good aerobic capacity tends to indicate healthy cardiovascular health going forward.
The idea was to build a database of results with the firefighters and measure accordingly going forward.
The research involved primarily men. This is only because there weren’t many women working as firefighters at the time.
It also does not seem to indicate that women could not benefit from the study as well. I’m sure they could.
Related Article: Bodyweight Strength Training For Beginners At Home
The research is comprehensive, detailing every aspect of the participants’ fitness tests recorded over a ten year period.
Specifically, very detailed information about each firefighter’s heart health was maintained. They had to report every minor heart issue before being cleared for work.
It would appear a significant basis for the research was to see, when reviewing those who developed cardiovascular issues, how well the stress testing predicted future health among the group.
So here’s the great part about the study.
Completely incidental to the stress testing, it turned out 1100 of them were also performing push ups as part of their annual exam.
They did as many as they could to a max of 80 in a single set.
I guess they didn’t have all day.
They included the data related to the push ups and categorized the firefighters based on how many they could complete.
It looks like it was only supposed to be a secondary aspect of the fitness testing and not a primary concern at the time.
But they took the data and ran their calculations and guess what they found?
Go ahead guess.
That’s right. You guessed it!
According to the article, it turned out that push up ability statistically, was a better predictor of future heart health than the traditional treadmill stress test.
That’s right again. Push ups and future health.
Here’s how the numbers worked out:
Men who could complete 11 push ups or more had less risk of developing heart problems over the next ten years than those who couldn’t complete 10 push ups.
And if you’re looking for really good and easy bodyweight exercises for beginners that can be a part of any at home workout routine, here’s some really good numbers…
Those who could complete 40 or more push ups in a single session, had a 96% less likelihood of developing heart problems over the next ten years than those who quit at 10 push ups or less.
Related Article: Push Ups Are A Great Bodyweight Exercise
Some pretty great news for those who are developing and improving their push up ranges or were concerned about push ups and future health.
Keep in mind they noted that the study is observational. That although more push up ability may indicate a lowered risk of heart problems over time it doesn’t guarantee that arm strength is an indicator of heart health.
It doesn’t go as far as to explain how being able to do more push ups and improved heart health are linked.
But Dr. Stefanos Kales, the senior author of the study and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, notes that muscular strength is one component of good fitness.
He also notes that push up proficiency likely indicates an interest in healthy eating and exercise. That can mean a healthy heart.
So there you have it.
Push ups and future health checks that you can do in the comfort of your own home.
Great news from the world of physical fitness research. Nobody likes the idea of having to go through some cold check up with costly and impersonal machines.
Now you have some evidence that you can give yourself a strength and heart health test to see how you’re doing.
Again, it’s not conclusive of anything but helpful.
Of course you may have great cardiovascular health but just never bothered to develop your upper body strength.
If you are just starting out with a physical fitness program and looking for some great workout tips for beginners, check out this great at home workout for beginners that you can start today.
It includes a great break down of how to do push ups properly so that you get the most out of the movement.
Additionally, you’ll find alternatives if the standard push up is still a little too difficult. (I’m always thinking about easy exercises for beginners who want to get started!)
There are also some other great exercises included in the workout so that you’ll be able to take advantage of a full body routine.
So if you are a beginner and looking for a great idea for an at home workout routine or was just curious about what push ups can do for you, hopefully you found an answer.
They’re great for helping to build upper body strength. Now science is demonstrating there could be a correlation between push ups and future heart health.
That sounds like pretty good news.
Hopefully it will help encourage you to get moving with your plans for a healthy physical fitness program of your own.
So get going with those push ups and keep tuning in for helpful fitness tips, ideas and news.
See you soon!
