A 71-Year-Old Doing Lots of Push-Ups

In last weekend's post, I wrote about keeping track of how many pull-ups I did in January. I received a sweet email that evening, and they agreed that I could share it if I keep it anonymous:

Hi Steve,

I do enjoy your speedo blog, especially the Friday photos.

wanted to share my push-ups story.

first off, I'm 71.7 yr old. my background is as an exercise physiologist research.

Also had 2 hip replacements in 2015 and was bummed. it's a family history of osteoarthritis. and replacements have a limited lifespan so was advised to not run with them. and not to keep my gym membership that included upper and lower body strength exercises. so I walk and in the winter, as like now, shovel snow.

so didn't want to get saggy upper arms.

and decided to start doing push-ups regularly. started with 10. then added a push-up a day for each week. so 10 became 11 became 12, etc. until I was up to 62 push-ups at the end of the year.

Now 6+ years later, I have not missed doing 62 push-ups each day. actually I do 40 push-ups, take a short break, less than a minute, and do the last 22 push-ups.

I have cats. sometimes my Mini-Me will try to crowd under me when I'm doing push-ups.

appreciate all that your wife is doing in this covid world. My family is in Wisconsin, but I've lived in CT since 1993. will move back some day.

It is fun to see how your sons are growing through the years. and how much camping and outdoor things you do with them.

My wife and I loved ALLLL of this email! (I mean, short of the hip replacements of course.)

First of all, 62 push-ups a day is amazing! I was kind of bragging about doing 612 pull-ups in a month last week. (And yes, pull-ups ARE harder, but still...) But they are doing nearly 2,000 push-ups in a month at 71.7 years old!

Secondly, I feel great that I can do 40 push-ups in a row, and I would LOVE to be able to do that when I'm in my 70s! #LifeGoals

And the cat part is cute - I've posted before that my cats come around when I'm working out too. They still sometimes rub all up on me as I'm trying to do push-ups as well.

Thanks for the note!! And wishing you many more years of 62 daily push-ups! :)