Men’s Journal – September 2019

FITNESS

Basic Pushup

From a high plank,

keeping spine straight

with elbows veering out slightly,

drop down toward the floor,

either touching chest to ground

or a few inches away, elbows

bent at least 90 degrees.

BEGINNER

THE WARMUP

Pushups are a serious upper-body exercise, so prep for it as you would any other big

workout. If you don’t, it can cause the chest to take on a disproportionate amount of the

work instead of spreading the effort to the core, says New York–based trainer Chris

Ryan. Start with shoulder rotations. Stand tall and hold a PVC pipe or a resistance band

with a wide grip, arms locked out and straight down. Rotate shoulders and draw hands

up and over head to the butt, then back again. And do some core rotational stretches,

too. Try lying on your back with knees bent and slowly drawing legs from side to side.

090 SEPTEMBER 2019 MEN’S JOURNAL photographs by JUSTIN STEELE

USHUPS ARE the ultimate

adapter exercise. They can

be done anywhere. They

recruit more than half the

muscles in the upper body,

as well as much of the core. And they’re

safe to do. Turns out, they’re also a mea-

surement of overall health.

A study in the Journal of the American

Medical Association Open Network showed

that the number of pushups a guy can crank

out in one minute is a predictor of cardiac

problems later in life. Researchers asked

1,104 f iref ighters, all men, to perform as

many pushups as they could in one minute.

Then they compared the results to mark-

ers of heart health. Those who amassed 40

or more (155 participants) were 96 percent

less likely to get cardiovascular disease than

P

This move has been called the perfect exercise. Now we’ve got news for you: Becoming proficient

in them just might extend your life. by JESSICA MIGALA

WORKOUT OF THE MONTH

THE WORKOUT

Warm up, then choose a set of moves

based on fitness (beginner, intermedi-

ate, advanced). Do 10 to 25 reps of

each move, and 3 to 5 total sets. Rest

as needed. Do this 4 or 5 times a week.

As you progress, level up the variations

and shorten rest times.

those who did 10 or fewer (75 guys). Most of

the f iref ighters—389 of them—fell into the

21 to 30 pushup range, meaning they did a

pushup about every two seconds.

Why pushups? It’s both their simplicity

(everyone knows them; they require zero

equipment) and that they test strength

and cardio capacity. “This was a quick

and dirty assessment of the robustness of

someone’s health and functional status,”

says study aut hor Stefanos N. Kales, M.D.,

at Harvard Medical School. His team tried

using a treadmill stress test, but it ended

up being less accurate, and participants

had to go to a cardiologist’s off ice to do it.

Sure, you read this and resolve to toil

away endlessly at the basic pushup. It’s a

legit workout, but it will get boring.

“Variations emphasize and challenge

different areas of the chest, shoulders, and

core,” says Cris Dobrosielski, a San Diego–

based trainer and author of Going the Dis-

tance. He designed the nine-move routine

on the following pages to shift stress areas

and keep things interesting. Do a base-

line pushup test, then get to work. Retest

monthly, aiming to improve capacity. This

is one case in which more is more.

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