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How do you do a soleus push up?
Your aim is to shorten the calf muscle.
1. Sit with your feet flat on the floor and
muscles relaxed.
2. Raise your heel, keeping your toes
on the ground.
3. Release the heel when it is at the top
of its motion and place it back on the
ground.
their metabolism and glucose utilisation,’ he experienced dramatic improvements in blood
explained. sugar regulation and in metabolism despite
the fact that the soleus is just one per cent of
‘It had people continuously do soleus the total musculature,’ Dr Andrew said.
push ups and they looked at things like
blood glucose utilisation... they looked at It saw a 52 per cent improvement in blood
metabolism and so on.’ glucose fluctuations and a 60 per cent
reduced insulin requirement after a meal.
Soleus push ups can be done by sitting on a
chair with the feet flat on the floor then raising Four hours of soleus push ups with breaks
the heels with the toes on the ground, placing reduced the level of fat in the blood and
it back and repeating. doubled fat metabolism.
The movement is extremely low-effort as The simple repetitive movement can sustain
the soleus is so powerful it won’t burn out or an ‘elevated oxidative metabolism’ for hours
fatigue. which improve the regulation of blood glucose
levels and in turn burn fat according to head
‘In fact you could walk all day on this muscle researcher Marc Hamilton
and most likely it would not get sore,’ Dr
Andrew said. ‘We never dreamed that this muscle has this
type of capacity. It’s been inside our bodies
The study focused on 25 men and women all along, but no one ever investigated how
of different ages, Body Mass Indexes, and to use it to optimise our health, until now,’ the
fitness levels to see if doing soleus push professor of Health and Human Performance
ups for 270 minutes or four and a half hours at the University of Houston said.
each day would effect metabolism and blood
glucose levels. ‘When activated correctly, the soleus muscle
can raise local oxidative metabolism to high
‘People who did these soleus push ups levels for hours, not just minutes.’
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