If you grew up in the UK, there’s a good chance the bleep test still lives somewhere in your nervous system. The tinny audio. The cold sports hall floor. The dawning realisation, somewhere around level 8, that PE had turned into a public flogging. Traditionally, the test is a simple measure of fitness – using shuttle runs and shortening rest to crudely evaluate your VO2 max (all that alongside a rising sense of dread). But we’re giving that old-school classic a muscle-friendly makeover.
This version swaps shuttle runs for devil’s presses, turning a cardio classic into a full-body strength and conditioning test. You’ll still be chasing the beep, but now every round will hammer your chest, shoulders, triceps, posterior chain, core and lungs in one fell swoop.
It’s simple, brutal, and with the right pair of dumbbells, a blisteringly effective way to build muscle, boost work capacity and test your mettle in one hit.
How to Do It
After a thorough warm-up, bring up the bleep test audio on YouTube, Spotify or other platforms, grab a pair of dumbbells and get to work. Perform one devil’s press on every beep, aiming to complete each rep in time with the audio. In the early rounds this will feel manageable. Don’t get cocky. As the pace increases and fatigue starts to bite, things will unravel quickly.
Your goal is simple: keep hitting clean reps in time with the beeps for as long as possible. Once you can no longer complete a rep before the next bleep, your test is over. Make a note of the round you finish and aim to beat it next time.
You should use a weight you could strict or push press for no more than 10 solid reps when fresh, but as a rough guide:
- Novice: 10-12kg dumbbells
- Intermediate: 15-17.5kg
- Advanced: 22.5kg
- Beast tier: 30kg
Devil’s Press x 1 Rep On Every Beep
- Hold your dumbbells at your waist before dropping down into a strong plank position, hands still gripping dumbbells.
- Lower your chest to the floor, performing a press-up, then jump your feet back in and, in one fluid motion, swing the dumbbells back between your legs.
- Use the momentum from your hips to drive the weights overhead to full lockout.
- Lower under control to your shoulder and then the floor, and get yourself ready for the next beep.
With almost 18 years in the health and fitness space as a personal trainer, nutritionist, breath coach and writer, Andrew has spent nearly half of his life exploring how to help people improve their bodies and minds.
As our fitness editor he prides himself on keeping Men’s Health at the forefront of reliable, relatable and credible fitness information, whether that’s through writing and testing thousands of workouts each year, taking deep dives into the science behind muscle building and fat loss or exploring the psychology of performance and recovery.
Whilst constantly updating his knowledge base with seminars and courses, Andrew is a lover of the practical as much as the theory and regularly puts his training to the test tackling everything from Crossfit and strongman competitions, to ultra marathons, to multiple 24 hour workout stints and (extremely unofficial) world record attempts.
You can find Andrew on Instagram at @theandrew.tracey, or simply hold up a sign for ‘free pizza’ and wait for him to appear.
