There Is A Method to the Madness

What your push-up count reveals about your longevity

• Rob Maxwell, M.A.

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to there is a Method to the Madness. My name is Rob Maxwell and I'm an exercise physiologist and personal trainer. I am the owner of Maxwell's Fitness Programs and I've been in business since 1994. The purpose of this podcast is to get to the real deal of what really works and, most importantly, why things work. Hence the name. There is a method to the madness. Before I get to today's show, I want to thank Jonathan and Lynn Gildan of the Gildan Group at Realty Pros. They are committed to providing the highest level of customer service in home sales. Why don't you give them a shout and figure out what your home is worth? 386-451-2412. What's happening, everybody? This is Rob here and I'm here to talk about some fitness.

Speaker 1:

I hope everybody had a good Labor Day yesterday. It's Tuesday for me here, not sure when you are listening to it, but it's the day after Labor Day. We went over and did a 5k in Ocala and yeah, that's a long way to go for us for a 5k because we are in Port Orange, but you know, took the day off from clients and saw that it was on a Monday and thought oh, that's, you know, kind of unique. I'd raced over there before but it was the Ocala Marathon years ago. Never traveled that far, I don't think, to Ocala anyway for a 5k. But you know what? Really glad I did it. It's a nice drive, a little stressful on 40, early in the morning I almost hit a deer. That's not good. I would have felt terribly guilty. Um, so that didn't happen, thank goodness. But other than that, it's a beautiful part of florida a lot of woods, the ocala national forest is awesome and, uh, not sure who put this race on. I wish I did, because I'd give them a huge shout out because they did a really, really good job with this 5k. Like they started on time, which I always appreciate.

Speaker 1:

You know, um, when you put on events, I think you got to start on time. It's only fair to the people that are prepared and ready and got there on time. You know, and, uh, a lot of times race companies are shuffling in more uh entries, you know, at the expense of the people who were there and more responsible. And then you know they're trying to get as many people registered as they can and those people got their like quarter till. You know things like that. I just I always really shake my head at that. I just think it's bad business, but they did not do that by any means. The course was very well marked. It was accurate 3.11, which is what a 5k is. Um, good support out on the course, nice people, um, you know, pretty cool t-shirts. So anyway it was. It was well worth it.

Speaker 1:

I would go back, um, after each race, me and Ellen and some of the other people I do a lot of 5ks with we always talk about, you know, is that one we're going to spend the money on to do again? You know, because I believe in value. Like you know, it's not so much the price of things I think often but are you getting good value for it? And there are just a lot of races out there that just haven't earned the value. They start late, they run out of t-shirts, they run out of t-shirt sizes, you know. They just basically don't really care. It seems like whether people show back up or not, you know. So anyway, that was one we would definitely do again. Harpreet went over there, did it and enjoyed it. Got to see a different part of Florida he's never seen before, being from London and California. So anyway, that was cool. So let's talk a little bit about the push-up Last week or a week ago maybe it was two weeks ago I talked about the three things that are definitely metrics we should pay attention to.

Speaker 1:

You know, as far as what the research says, something that is easy to measure, something that you can measure, and the metrics that matter, and I talked about how calories does matter, your body weight does matter and pushups matter, and pushups gets people kind of confused because they're like well, you know what is so special about the pushup? Well, number one, it is something that is measurable, so there's a lot of data on. We have to understand that. There's a lot of data on the push-ups because it is measurable, and there are a lot of different organizations that test for those things, whether it be the military, whether it be good wellness centers and there are a lot of good wellness centers out there that are doing different types of wellness screening on people, and one of them will be the American College of Sports Medicine's modified push-up test for women or the American College of Sports Medicine standard push-ups for men, and they use them and then they record their data and then you know that data gets entered into the data bank and it can be used to check things out. So there's a lot of data on it. For one thing, that's one thing to keep in mind.

Speaker 1:

So, when I was talking about the value of it, it's important to understand that, look man, push-ups have better health outcomes. I mean, that's just been shown. Is it because there's something so miraculous about the push-up? Like you know, it's just another exercise and in reality it is just another exercise. So no, it's nothing miraculous about it.

Speaker 1:

I think it's the fact that when people are able to do push-ups, they have enough strength all the way around to be able to do those and other things. It's really as simple as that. Like, there are people that have torn rotator cuffs and they're partially repaired or they're never going to be 100% because of scar tissue, say, well, I can't do push-ups anymore because it creates pain. That's fine. Does that mean I'm no longer going to have a good health outcome? Of course not. It doesn't mean that it's correlated to. We know that somebody who is putting in the time to get stronger at them is putting in the time to do the other thing. So, in the case of the person with the torn rotator cuff or partially torn rotator cuff, if they are spending as much time invested in doing other forms of strength training. Of course, they're still going to see those outcomes. So it's very important to understand that.

Speaker 1:

That the pushup itself isn't miraculous, all right, but it is a great exercise that measures these things and, man, it's one of two of the best calisthenic style body weight exercises you can do all the time, no matter where you go. Again, with exception of injury, that you can do all the time. That and the squat it's phenomenal. So you know, let's talk about that. It works the chest, the shoulders and the triceps. So that is why it is a major pushing exercise, because those are the pushing muscle groups of the upper body working collectively. It's very hard to do a push exercise and not incorporate those three muscle groups. Depending on your exercise angle of where your arms and shoulders are in relation to your spine will depend upon which of those muscles you are working the most.

Speaker 1:

For the most part, if you're doing a standard push-up correctly and when I say standard I don't mean standard in the true sense. Let me explain that further. When you're doing a ultimately correct push-up, whether it be standard or modified, it is predominantly the pectoralis major, so your chest muscles. That means as we're going down, we don't go down with like teed elbows, so to say. I see people do that and I cringe. And you're not keeping your elbows firmly against your side Nothing wrong with that but that's not a standard push-up, that's more of a tricep push-up. So when you let your elbows go out and you go down at an angle of about 45 degrees, you're going to be working primarily your pectoralis major, which is what we want, because it's one of the largest muscle groups of the upper body and it's one of the largest, or is the largest of the pushing muscles of the upper body. We want that.

Speaker 1:

And then, following that would be your triceps and then a little bit of your anterior deltoids. So you're getting pretty much everything you do upper body wise. You're getting a lot of deltoids, which is why you don't have to do a lot of specific deltoid work. The push-up covers all of it, really. And then understanding that the chest press machine is a machine version of a push-up. So if you're weak on that, that means you're probably weak on push-ups.

Speaker 1:

The dumbbell chest press is a dumbbell exercise that replicates essentially a push-up. A bench press is a push-up. So it's like all the same exercise done in different fashion. One of the downsides of a push-up, but when you really think about it it's not that bad of a downside is that when you get strong, there's no way to really increase the load. I mean, you can put things on your back or use bands, but that hasn't been shown to be too overly effective, but you can't really increase load. So you can improve your endurance but not your strength. So then you would have to incorporate the other forms of it chest press on the machine, dumbbells, bench press, whatever because you need to be able to increase the load. But absolutely for endurance you don't need to increase anything but the reps, and when you travel it's not going to matter because you're going to get what you need even if you're not adding more weight.

Speaker 1:

So those are the muscle groups that are used, but you're also using your core. If you're doing it properly modified is off the knees, but you still have to engage your core and keep your pecs in line with your spine as you go down. A lot of times we see people kind of do the wiggle worm on the way up. Well, then you are not really working your core. So if you do it correctly and then in standard position, of course as well, if you're staying up on your toes and you're up on your hands, that's basically a standard plank position from the pushup position right. So that's obviously core. You're moving, you're working your core. So so many different muscle groups are trained when we do the pushup. So those are the muscle group, a lot of core, pecs, triceps, deltoids, and then of course you're always going to have your antagonist, the opposing muscle groups, anytime you work something.

Speaker 1:

So there's a lot of muscle action involved in the push-up. All right, so just for fun, let's learn a little bit about it. So the push-up literally can go back 5,000 years and it is often credited to some yoga practices in India 5,000 years ago. So we have been doing it for a really, really long time. So there's your first little bit of history. You can say, oh well, man's been doing push-ups for about 5,000 years. You would not be wrong Again, it came out of more of a yoga tradition in India. Now the term push-up kind of is credited to us Americans and the English between 1905 and 1910 is somewhere around the ballpark of dates that we started actually calling it the push-up itself.

Speaker 1:

There are records showing that in ancient Greece and a lot of the philosophers and if you know me, you know I love that stuff. I love studying ancient Greece and philosophy and the Stoics and all the other philosophers of Greece like Socrates and Plato and all that good stuff. Well, they were absolutely known to strength train. They were absolutely known to keep themselves in shape, which is why oftentimes when you hear people talking about an example of a fit body, they'll say, oh, they're built like a Greek god, because that sort of was the epitome to them of what people should look like, which was, for males anyway, a high level of muscularity. So the push-up was famous then and it was famous in India and the first person given credit to it and I talked about this in one of my books, actually. So I'm always pleased when I see names get repeated. But anyway, jarek Ravila was kind of given credit for inventing the modern day push-up. That's the name. I guess he was the first person to start calling it that and doing it. But again, that is around 1905, 1910. But we know it went back further to the ancient Greeks and to the Indian culture. So anyway, but there's some history behind it. It is a great exercise.

Speaker 1:

Now I want to like finish this with a little bit of a story, of the value of it and try to tie all this in for you. Years ago, it was probably 20 years ago, I was doing a road bicycle race near Orlando and I was doing a lot of endurance stuff back then and I raced bikes and if you know anything about bike racing, you know it's a different kind of bike than a triathlon bike. You are in packs, which you call a peloton, and you'll have people behind you, people in front of you, and then the idea is, as you get closer to the finish line, somebody tries to break away, to win. You try to break away from the pack, but for the most of the race if you're in the lead pack, or really if you're in the second lead pack, third lead pack, whatever but for most of the race people pack up in pelotons and you don't try to win until you feel like you can get away and nobody can catch you. So that's kind of the essence of a road race.

Speaker 1:

This was about a 40 miler, I think it was. It was 40 or 50 and it might have been two laps, I don't remember. But I had, uh, gotten up near the front and I was able to stay up towards the front the entire race and I had a friend with me. He was racing with me and, um, I was a better sprinter than him. So our game plan was going to be and, and he was stronger, like holding poles and stuff like that, so kind of like taking the blows, getting up front and letting people draft. He was super strong at that. And our game plan was going to be because it was just us two.

Speaker 1:

And then there was these teams from different parts of Central Florida. We were going to stick together. He was going to try to pull me like the last, I don't know five miles, so I could kind of catch my breath, and then, as we got close, I was going to sprint away because I was a better sprinter than he and I'm not bragging, it's just. You know, we worked together. If I would have won, he would have won.

Speaker 1:

So, anyway, we stayed up front the whole time and we were, our game plan was working out almost perfect, whereas there was maybe I don't know quarter mile left, I don't know 200 yards, 200 meters, something like that, and maybe a little bit further, and my friend did a breakaway, pulled away. You know, I got on his wheel, so to say and you know we got out front and he was going as hard as he can, then he's going to pull to the left and then I was going to go around him and go for the win. That was the game plan and it was working until this one guy came up and he wanted my friend's wheel, so to say. So he starts edging in, he starts edging in and I'm holding the line. I'm holding the line, you know, being aggressive myself, because I don't want to, I don't want to lose. So I'm holding his wheel and he's trying to push me off the wheel and you know that's illegal's illegal, by the way and uh, he finally, kind of like jams in there and throws an elbow Um, kid you not, this is amateur racing.

Speaker 1:

Who would go to that extent in an amateur race? So knocks me off the bike. Um, bad, crash, real bad. I flip over the handlebars, I get run over by the group that had kind of caught us through the all this mayhem and mayhem and got run over. I still have a chain sprocket scar on my back where somebody's sprocket went over my back.

Speaker 1:

Make a long story short I ended up in the emergency room. Nothing too tragic or bad, but, you know, pretty banged up and bloodied and, as the doctor was, you know, going through all the x-rays and stuff, he's like, you know, miraculously you've got some road rash but no broken bones. I said, well, thank goodness. He said you know you can credit your muscular frame for that, that you know the fact you have muscle on you when you land, you know that absorbs a lot of the blow and everything. So anyway, I'm saying all that because that always stuck with me, even though I knew that. You know, hearing it from somebody when you are in the emergency room is nice to hear. In a way it takes, you know, a little bit of the put, some sweetness in the bitter.

Speaker 1:

But that's kind of the key with all this with pushups. So, like again, it's not a miraculous exercise but the fact that we can do them shows we're strong, and the fact that we're strong shows we have muscularity. And the fact we have muscularity shows very positive health outcomes, like they've shown when it comes to BMI, that people with normal BMIs actually live longer, so to say, live longer, live more of a quality of life than people that are underweight. So it's important to understand that we want to carry muscle, we want to be stronger and the push up is a great replication or a great example or a great metric to let us know if we are hitting that goal or not.

Speaker 1:

All right, so I hope this helps and, as always, please send this out to your friends. Text it to them, because it helps spread it around. I mean, not the people that don't care, but send it to people in your contact list that might go. Man, this is going to be good for them. All right, thanks everybody. Thank you for listening to today's program. I ask you to please follow the show wherever you get your podcasts and please select automatic download, because that really helps the show. Now I want to thank Overhead Door of Daytona Beach, the area's premier garage door company. They have the best product. They have the best service. I personally vouch for Jeff and Zach Hawk, the owners. They are great people with a great company. If you have any garage door needs, please give them a shout at 386-222-3165.

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