One exercise. No movement. 5 minutes. It will break you.
And that's exactly the point.
Brady Volmering has been using a deceptively simple exercise to expose weaknesses in athletes for years. Not just physical weaknesses—mental and emotional ones too.
It's called the slow-lower deep push-up. And it will tell you more about yourself than a thousand personality tests.
The Exercise
Here's the setup:
Get to the bottom of a push-up position. Elevate your hands on blocks or plates so you can sink deeper than the ground would normally allow. Now hold that bottom position—arms pulling you down, chest low—and don't move.
That's it. Just hold.
The goal? Three to five minutes straight, then press back up as if you didn't just spend five minutes in hell.
"The process to get there is absolutely brutal."
Sounds simple. Try it. I dare you.
What Happens at 90 Seconds
Most people tap out before two minutes. Not because they physically can't hold longer—because something else breaks first.
"That exercise is so simple that it will highlight for you the weaknesses that you have. Whether that is something that's physical, like literally you don't have the physical strength to hold with a tricep... it could be something that's emotional where it's like you're not willing to recruit what you need to go there."
The slow-lower exposes three layers:
Physical: Do you have the actual muscular strength and endurance? If not, you'll know fast.
Mental: When you feel discomfort, does your mind immediately say "quit"? Do you start bargaining? Making excuses?
Emotional: Are you willing to feel what needs to be felt? To let yourself get angry, or tap into that primal gear?
Most people fail at mental or emotional long before they fail physically.
The Correlation Brady Can't Ignore
Here's where it gets interesting:
"If somebody gets to that duration of time, and let's say they're stuck at two minutes or they're stuck at three minutes or they're stuck at 90 seconds, that person—their ability to invest themselves in whatever it is, their sport, their relationships, their career—is at that level."
Read that again.
Your slow-lower time correlates to your life investment capacity.
Stuck at 90 seconds? You're probably also stuck at 90% effort in everything else. Always holding something back. Always hitting the same ceiling.
"A person that's gotten five or seven [minutes], they're also then able to invest themselves to that degree in their other areas of their life."
The exercise doesn't create capacity. It reveals it.
It's Not About Pain Tolerance
Before you dismiss this as "embrace the pain bro" content—that's not it.
"It's not that I like pain. That's not it."
Pain is information. Sensation is data. Your body is telling you something.
"If I'm not feeling or sensing anything, then I already know how to do what I'm asking myself to do. It's already easy for me. If I'm sensing something, that's my body telling me I don't quite know how to do this yet."
The discomfort isn't the enemy. It's the teacher.
When you hit that wall at 2 minutes and want to quit, you're not hitting a physical wall. You're hitting a story—a belief about what you're capable of, about what discomfort means, about whether you're the type of person who pushes through.
The Breakthrough Pattern
Brady's watched people work on this for months:
"Maybe the first day you stop and maybe the second day you stop and maybe the third time you stop and maybe the seventh time you stop. But then eventually you get to like the eighth time you're like, alright, something happens where you figure it out and then you break through."
That breakthrough moment isn't random. It's the moment where the old story finally loses its grip.
One day, something shifts. Maybe you get angry enough. Maybe you want it badly enough. Maybe you finally realize the discomfort won't actually kill you.
And suddenly three minutes becomes possible. Then four. Then five.
And every other area of your life shifts with it.
Why Train Alone
Here's a counterintuitive piece: Brady does most of this work alone. Deliberately.
"I specifically view training as a time to work on myself and my own life. Like motivations are my own to get to know and understand myself a little bit better. What drives me, what doesn't drive me, what's getting in the way, what are the weak points."
When you're in the slow-lower, minute three, shaking, nobody there to impress—that's where you meet yourself.
No external motivation. No coach yelling. No crowd cheering. Just you and the question: Are you going to quit?
"When I get in a slow-lower push-up, there's no one else there. It's just me. I'm three minutes and 30 seconds in. I'm like, this is absolute ass. Can I actually want to be there? Do I actually want to do this? Do I actually want to get better?"
The answer to that question—in that moment—is the answer to every other hard thing in your life.
The Practical Takeaway
You don't have to do slow-lower deep push-ups. But you do need something that exposes your edges.
Something simple enough that there's nowhere to hide. Something hard enough that you'll want to quit. Something measurable so you can track your growth.
Find your version and make it a regular practice:
- A hold you can time
- A run you can measure
- A conversation you can have
- A commitment you can keep
Then pay attention to where you break.
That's not weakness to be ashamed of. That's information. That's exactly where you need to grow.
And when you push through—even once—you don't just get better at the exercise.
You get better at everything.
Brady Volmering runs DAC Performance and Health, training professional and college athletes who want to know what they're really made of.
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