The Soleus Push-up

The Soleus Push-up

It's a micro exercise or a micro movement. It's a very small movement of a very small portion of your body, in fact, just 1% of your musculature, that when it's performed continuously while seated has, at least what they report, very dramatic positive changes in terms of fitness, metabolism, and blood glucose utilization ~ AH

There's a muscle in your calf called the soleus muscle. It's a special muscle because it doesn't fatigue with exercise. Other muscles, like your bicep, fatigue after a few minutes. The experiment found that flexing the soleus continuously has a bunch of profound health benefits.

So whether you barely move or you're always exercising and want to optimize your fitness. The 'soleus push-up' is for you. Here's how to do it:

Sit in a normal seating position and continuously move your heels up and down without moving your toes. Kinda like bouncing your heels. So similar to the typical calf raise but only with a bit of elevation (10-15 degrees). Andrew gives a duration but that makes it feel like homework.
Here's a better way:

Do soleus push-ups when you're seated and not doing a focused activity.

Look at your upcoming day (or week). Is there a time you're going to be sitting a lot? Maybe commuting, traveling, sitting in class, watching a game, anxiously waiting, or using your phone.

When you're in any of those, start doing a few reps. If the science is true about this, you'll get a workout when you feel like you have nothing else to do. It's better than scrolling Reddit. In fact, we can do soleus push-ups and scroll Reddit at the same time!

It's weird to do these at first (just the pushups, not the Reddit). So do a few push-ups now to get some muscle memory. Slightly elevate your heels up then down. The next time you notice you're seated and not focused on a specific task, start doing this again for as long as you want (at least a few minutes).

Here's a clip of Andrew explaining it, a video that goes more in depth about how and why to do it, and the full-text article. Enjoy your push-ups!