The more push ups you can do the less likely you are to suffer from a major cardiovascular event. That is the take home message from a recent analysis of data from a group of male firefighters in Indiana, which was published in a major medical journal (JAMA).

The idea that increased fitness, decreased cardiovascular risk of course is far from breaking news.

However, the implications that push up capacity may have predictive value for future Cardiovascular issues is much more interesting.

A large group (over 1100) of firefighters in Indiana were asked to do as many push ups as they could (with some rules…see below) among some other tests such as VO2 max etc. They were then followed over a 7 year period to track the number of significant cardiovascular events that occurred. This is type of data researchers in the epidemiology game salivate over.

75 of those firefighters could do 0-10 push-ups, 200 did 11-20, 389 did 21-30, 285 did 31-40 and 155 did 40+.

Now if you’re like me, 2 things pop into your head:

1) I wouldn’t want to rely one of those 75 firefighters who couldn’t do 10 push ups to carry me out of a burning building and
2) what category would I fall in??

So I tested myself, with Pete as my witness, at the gate of an airport! Don’t worry about my results…test yourself!! Get down and give me 20…or 30…or slow golf clap, 40.

It’s a pretty basic set up, which is the beauty of all this really. Set a metronome (or use an app like metronome) to 80 and do a full push up every beat. That’s more than one push up per second. Or 40 in 30 seconds. You’re done when 3 beats have passed without completing the next rep.

Back to the study. Those firefighters who did 10 push-ups or less had 3x greater risk of a major cardiac event compared to those in the 11-20 push-up group. Those who did 40 push-ups or more had a 96% Cardiovascular disease reduction!! The numbers get a little murky in the middle, but I feel at ease with the trend that more push ups are generally better for your heart.

But before you start preaching the artery cleansing virtues of push ups. This is not a cause and effect finding. Think of the push up capacity test as a window peaking into your overall fitness level.

Gotta love a test so simple, cheap and easy to use that it could be used by almost anyone, anywhere.

It’s not too much of a stretch to imagine your family physician or maybe even your employer or an insurance company making sure you are capable of doing a minimum number. For men, 10 might be a meaningful threshold. I’d hate to see the insurance premium increase for not being able to hit that threshold. Or maybe on the flip side, in a utopic world, it could earn you a discount (healthiq type model).

We know that surveys and questionnaires aren’t reliable…because, well, sorry to be the bearer of bad news, people lie!

So next time your doctor thinks you might be fibbing about your fitness…don’t be surprised if they push the scale aside and make you do some good ole fashioned push ups.