Everything Mike said above Marco is spot on.

I've always done press-ups since my teens, but lockdown introduced me to the "Bring Sally Up Press-Up Challenge", (https://www.fitandwell.com/feature/b...h-up-challenge _) which to date I've never been able to complete fully (the eccentric aspects beat me every time), but it spurred me into being more thoughtful about this particular exercise and how to try and improve.

Research evidence? Well, it's a bit low-brow in terms of hard research, but I think Michael Mosley has commented on how press-ups can help with bone density (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/a...-works-me.html) and heart health (https://www.express.co.uk/life-style...-heart-disease ) as well as other benefits (https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000vp09 ).

Also, plucked from the internet, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6484614/

"Findings
This longitudinal cohort study of 1104 occupationally active adult men found a significant negative association between baseline push-up capacity and incident cardiovascular disease risk across 10 years of follow-up. Participants able to complete more than 40 push-ups were associated with a significant reduction in incident cardiovascular disease event risk compared with those completing fewer than 10 push-ups."

More generally, from Men's Health (that well known bastion of objective health research (not!) ) https://www.menshealth.com/uk/fitnes...press-up-edit/

Regarding running performance improvement, I can't say my running has got better (faster or easier), but at 60 plus years I'm having to reconstrue how I understand performance progress anyway!

Press-ups certainly compliment one of my other regular exercises, indoor rowing (all pulling rather than pushing), and of course they don't require any equipment at all or cost a penny in gym fees etc. Clearly there are other resistance exercises that boast the same simple spartan requirements, and I'm sure you could "Sally" them to the tune too. Indeed, I'm waiting to hear Mike has smashed the Sally chin-up challenge soon