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The morning of my 50th birthday in May I did something I had not tried in a long time. I dropped to the floor and did 50 push-ups, one for each year. I had to break it up into sets and the last few where shaky, but I did it.
And it felt great.
As a new member to the 50-plus club, I realized this bread-and-butter exercise still works wonders as a snapshot of your fitness. In addition, it might predict your risk for cardiovascular problems. In a study of male firefighters published in the February 2019 issue of JAMA Network Open, men who could complete at least 40 push-ups over 30 seconds had a significantly lower risk of heart attack, heart failure, or other cardiovascular problems over the next 10 years compared with men who were able to complete less than 10.