Link Between Push Ups and Cardio Health

by Mitch Hauschildt, MA, ATC, CSCS

Recently, there was an interesting study done that looked into a possible link between cardiovascular health and a push up exercise.  What they found after looking at 10 years worth of data from 1104 firefighters was that those men who could perform 40 or more push ups were at significantly less risk for a cardiovascular event than those who performed less than 10 push ups.

The main reason that I think this study is interesting is because we usually think about reducing cardiovascular risk by performing anaerobic exercise to improve the efficiency of the cardiovascular system.  This studies suggests that an exercise that is typically thought of as a strength exercise is demonstrating a larger effect on the system overall.

Of course, like any study, there are limitations here.  It was only performed on men and they were all firefighters, so the assumption is that most of them are pretty active overall (although I have seen some firefighters who aren’t very active and healthy).  So, that leads us wondering what the application is to the larger population is overall.  But I do think that it is a great conversation piece for looking at improving the health of the people around us.

As I think through the study and it’s applications, I do have several thoughts:

• While the push up is not a typical cardiovascular exercise, I do think that these results shouldn’t surprise us.  The reason that I say that is because the push up is a multi-factorial movement that requires a lot of things such as strength, stability,  and motor control to perform it.  In order to perform a good push up, you generally need to be in pretty decent health in all of these areas.
• It is hard to perform push ups when you are overweight.  So, while we think of it as a strength exercise, it also becomes a self limiting exercise for those who are in poor health and have increased risk factors for heart issues like being over weight.
• I’m not a cardiologist, but I do think that it makes sense to load the system both aerobically and anaerobically for good heart health.  Performing fairly high levels of push ups in succession will naturally raise the heart rate to higher levels than simple aerobic exercise.  This prepares us for real life with intermittent times of stress and things that we have to react to.  If we train the heart to handle anaerobic loads in our exercise programming, then they will be more likely to handle it in their every day life instead of launching into a cardiovascular event.
• Variety of exercise is very important.  It is imperative that we perform an exercise program that involves aerobic exercise, anaerobic exercise, strength training and high quality movement patterns is good for all aspects of our health.  Doing a lot of just one thing isn’t as good as we would like to think it is.  Mix it up for your overall health.
• Simple, safe, inexpensive exercises are still and will always be the most effective way to exercise, despite what the latest and greatest fad is that comes out.  The best exercises have been around a long time and will continue to be around for years and years to come.

If you are interested in reading the full study for yourself, you can find it here.