If you’re into podcasts, you’ve probably heard of the hugely popular Mel Robbins Podcast, which is currently the No. 1 podcast on Apple podcasts and is in the Top 10 podcasts on Spotify.
If you aren’t familiar, Robbins is a motivational author, speaker and podcast host who regularly talks about mental health topics such as anxiety, stress and confidence, as well as physical health topics such as disease prevention and women’s fitness.
Her podcast episodes often inspire lots of conversations and even lifestyle changes, and a March episode of the podcast was no different.
On the episode, podcast guest Dr. Vonda Wright, who is an orthopedic surgeon and longevity expert, shared with Robbins the weekly exercise regimen that all women should follow: It included walking a total of three hours each week (broken up over at least four days), lifting heavy weights at least twice a week, and learning “to lift your own bodyweight” — which according to Wright means all women should be able to do 11 push-ups. Robbins asked if those push-ups can be on your knees, and Wright replied “no.”
The 11 push-up idea quickly caught the attention of women across the country who took to social media to try the challenge. But do all women really need to be able to do 11 push-ups? Or are there better measures of fitness?
Below, trainers share their honest thoughts on this 11 push-up challenge:
No, all women should not be able to do 11 push-ups.
According to Katie Gould, the founder of KG Strong, a strength-training gym in Philadelphia, the idea that all women should be able to do 11 push-ups likely comes from a 2019 study of 1,100 male firefighters that found that men who could do more than 40 push-ups had a lower risk of cardiovascular disease compared to men who could do fewer than 10 push-ups.
“So, these findings aren’t really directly … applicable to women,” Gould noted.
Danielle Repetti, the founder and head coach at Iron and Mettle, a women’s strength training gym in San Francisco, agreed and said the 11 push-up number feels arbitrary.
Gould also questioned how fast people were doing the push-ups, which can make them easier to do, or if they were doing them with resistance, which can make them tougher, and if they even had proper form.
“If you’re doing three super slow push-ups, to me, I would say that that’s an even greater indicator of strength than doing 11 improper form fast push-ups,” Gould said.
“I’ve had clients that can bench press 100, 125 pounds, and they aren’t able to do 11 push-ups on their toes, and that doesn’t mean that they’re not strong, and it doesn’t really mean anything about them as people in a body,” Repetti said.
Both Repetti and Gould said there are many reasons why a fit, strong person can’t do a chest-to-floor push-up. Maybe they just had a baby, have wrist issues, have larger bodies or are older, Repetti said.
“I’m not going to ask them to do a full-range push-up. It doesn’t feel good, it hurts. So that’s not how we’re necessarily going to strengthen their upper body,” said Gould.
“We’re going to do single-arm floor press, or we’re going to do a plank and hold that. There’s so many other exercises that can build your upper body if a full-range hands-on-floor push-up isn’t accessible to you,” Gould noted.
Your strength goals should be personal and should make you feel good.
While it’s important to have benchmarks when it comes to bettering your health and fitness, it doesn’t mean one across-the-board benchmark is right for everyone, noted Gould.
“Your personal goals are really going to be the determining factor for what your benchmark should be. Not everybody’s goal is going to be to do 11 push-ups,” Gould said.
“Strength goals should be personalized, and while push-ups are a really valuable measure of upper body and core strength, they’re not the only indicator of fitness, and they’re not a sole indicator of health conditions,” Gould added.
Plus, your strength goal shouldn’t make you feel bad. That will only discourage you from returning to a workout class or personal training session in the future.
“Any time we embark on a strength journey, I think it’s really important to feel good about your body while you’re doing it, and not look at it from the lens of ‘Oh, I failed and that means something about me and my body,’” Repetti added.
An 11 push-up challenge is a fast-track way to feel discouraged if you can’t hit the number.
Everyone expresses strength in different ways, and everyone has different places where they excel and where they struggle, Repetti said.
“If you go and do the push-ups and you can’t do it … I just really want women to know that doesn’t mean anything about you and your own strength,” Repetti noted.
In strength training, you’ll find the movements that you’re great at and not so great at. “It’s important that women don’t think of the push-up as being the end all be all,” Repetti added.
But push-ups do have benefits when it comes to healthy aging and building strength.
“So, push-ups work pretty much all the muscles in the upper body — chest shoulders, triceps, those are all parts of the horizontal pressing motion, and then push-ups also challenge our core,” Repetti said.
Push-ups benefit your posture, your functional strength, and can help with daily activities like lifting things, pushing things away, pulling yourself up and even boosts your bone density (which is crucial for women as they age and bone density drops), said Gould.
Push-ups can also help you have the strength to push yourself off the ground, whether you’re playing with your grandkids, your pets, or if you fall down, both experts said.
Like all strength training, push-ups can help you continue to do the things you want to do as you get older, such as move around your home, go up and down stairs, even dance.
“How you feel in 50 years is kind of dependent on some of the things you’re doing now,” Repetti said. “We really want to build as much strength as we can so that … we don’t have to be one of those people who are like, ‘Oh, I used to do that, and now I don’t anymore because my body doesn’t feel good when I do that.’”
If you do want to be able to do push-ups, there are steps you can take to get there.
So, not being able to do a push-up (nonetheless 11) on your toes doesn’t mean anything about you or your fitness, but if you do have a goal to be able to do some push-ups, the trainers who spoke with HuffPost have some tips.
First, you can try to do push-ups on your knees, but Gould said she prefers an incline push-up as a way to build your upper body strength.
For this type of push-up, you’ll want to put your hands on an elevated surface like a bench or box, said Repetti. Or, you can even do it with your hands on your couch.
This way, you’re moving less of your body weight while still maintaining a push-up position. You can also see your progress as you move to lower and lower surfaces, said Gould, “and that is a big thing for me with my clients.”
These modifications allow you to “train the full range of motion and get the most out of learning that movement,” noted Repetti.
“So, once you strengthen some of those muscles, then the push-ups in and of themselves get easier,” Repetti said. “We want to essentially make the movement easier at first, so that our body can learn how to do it, and then slowly and gradually over time, make that movement more and more challenging.”
“I would consider a push-up on your toes one of the more challenging variations of the push-up,” Repetti said ― and noted that you can make a push-up even harder by adding weight.
“But, for most people, I think learning some of the easier variations and then slowly building up to push-ups on your toes is the best way to get better at push-ups,” she said.
And, if you find that you can’t hit 11 push-ups even with some additional training, that’s OK. There are other ways to get strong and stay strong — what matters most is that you find a sustainable strength regimen that makes you feel good and keeps you moving.
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