Written by Dr. Jeffrey Peng, MD — Board-Certified Sports Medicine Physician Published: March 3, 2026 | Last Updated: March 3, 2026 Push-ups are one of the most basic exercises in fitness, but they may reveal far more about your health than you realize. In my practice as a sports medicine physician, I frequently see how muscular strength — or the lack of it — directly impacts long-term health outcomes. A landmark study published in the Journal of the American Medical Associat