Among male firefighters, those who could do more than 40 pushups in a row had 96% fewer cardiovascular events than those who did could do 10 or fewer.
The result should not be that surprising, but a pushup test may be a much less costly way than things like treadmill tests for physicians to assess physical fitness for the purpose of medical decision making. (Of course, in the US, would a lower cost medical procedure actually be used?)
I also thought that treadmill tests were used for patients with suspected specific conditions and not as a general screen for good health.
A more interesting question (not answered by article) would be - does increasing the number of pushups you can do lower your risk? The published results are correlational.
This was a very limited study with a narrow range of age, sex and fitness. They were all firefighters for crying out loud. Not sure why it got the publicity it did, and don’t think it means much to the rest of us. Of course fit people are less likely to have heart attacks, but this study didn’t add much to that understanding.
How many middle-aged men can do 11 or more pushups? For the screening test to be useful, the number would have to be pretty big, otherwise you wouldn’t be screening out very many people.
A pushup test wouldn’t be a useful screening test for middle-aged women.
Totally absurd study. Within a decade or so, we will have cheap and reliable PRS scores for cardiovascular risk factors that are better than anything we have now for identifying individuals at risk. See, e.g., here for just a glimpse at where this is all going:
My old “PE Nazi” PE teacher probably feels vindicated! 40 was the magic number girls had to do in one minute to get an automatic A in one PE module. For the dudes, it was significantly fewer - but they had to do chin-ups ?!
Ridiculous study. My bet is less than 5% of the over 35 population can do 40 pushups in a row using the proper form that would count on a military pt test.
I could do about 12 son approved push-ups when he got out of Officer Candidate School - as I recall it was good enough for my age group if I’d been at OCS. Unfortunately something weird is going on with my hands. Left had a week of what I assume was carpal tunnel pain (brace helped), now the right hand thumb base is sore, but in a different way. Can’t even do one push up until this resolves. Grrr.
If it’s so, I’m doomed. Altho as someone else pointed out, all the subjects were men, average age of 40, and firefighters. The researchers don’t know that these results would hold for women, or older people.