Fitness by numbers

Being someone that's arithmetically challenged, I'm surprising even myself right now by saying that I'm a fan of numbers. Words have always been more my thing. So, in a reversal of one of my own personal, lifelong maxims, I've come to realize that my focus on health and fitness is primarily a numbers game.

This is probably why my attention is easily stolen by the bold-fonted numbers that appear sporadically in issues of Men's Health magazine. True, there is always a collection of words that appear underneath, explaining what the numbers above represent. But still, without those numbers, those statements remain unquantified and, frankly, far less interesting.

In the most recent edition of the British version of the magazine (which is more or less the same as the U.S. version, only with the more frequent use of the letter "U"), the following numbers appear at the bottom of a random page: 10, 1, 20, 79. I bet you want to know what these numbers represent, don't you? So did I.

Here's how the numbers break down ...

10 = Percentage harder your lats work for lat pull-downs with a wider-than-shoulders grip, versus a close grip

1 = Number of pull-ups the average man can do

20 = Percentage of your body fat you need to lose so you can double the number of pull-ups you can do now

79 = Percentage of the oft-neglected middle trapezius muscles (on your back) that is recruited while doing the single-arm row