That question was answered 22 months ago, when Chaminade alumnus Alex Capogna ’10 defied the odds and etched himself into the Guinness Book of World Records by completing 884 chest-to-ground pushups in an hour. Almost two years later, Capogna has surpassed that mark twice by immense margins, most recently managing to push his body up and down 1,530 times in just 60 minutes.

“It’s pretty cool to have my name in the Guinness Book of World Records,” said the 32-year-old Capogna, a native of New Hyde Park. “Going for the record gives me something to look forward to week-to-week. I’m busy with my work as a lawyer, but it is good to have a couple of things on the side, like this, that give me motivation in other directions.”

In his freshman year of high school, Capogna almost failed his physical education test, scoring the lowest out of all of his classmates in his grade and failing to do a single pullup, but by the end of his senior year, he set what was at the time a Chaminade record for the most consecutive pullups with 35.

“This bad test score slapped me in the face and made me focus on my physical health more,” admitted Capogna.

Even though he put a stronger emphasis on his physique as his high school tenure at Chaminade went on, Capogna never once had the thought of trying to break a record of such magnitude. That idea didn’t cross his mind until he was at Georgetown University.

Just before he attended law school, Capogna thought breaking a pushup record could be a good fact to put on a résumé. At first, he chased the “open” pushup record in one hour, which at the time was around 1,800 pushups. According to Capogna, he unofficially broke that record in his home, which prompted his girlfriend, now his fiancée, to buy him a plaque, recognizing his accomplishment.

When he joined the law firm that he currently works at, Sullivan and Cromwell LLP, in 2019, he put the plaque in his office. Noticing the plaque, one of Capogna’s partners at the firm urged him to chase an official pushup record.

With that encouragement, Capogna shifted his focus to chest-to-ground pushups, a much more technical form of pushups, centered around technique. Then, the rest was history. Surprisingly, the driven Capogna only dedicated at least one hour every five or six days to training, but the workouts were so hard and grueling that he only needed about one training session a week.

“My workouts are extremely intense,” explained Capogna. “My goal was to push myself to failure during each repetition.”

Not only is breaking a record of this extent a physical challenge, but it is also a mental struggle. Capogna talked about how important the mental aspect of completing 1,530 chest-to-ground pushups is.

“At the end of the day, the mental side is the whole ‘game’,” said Capogna. “The body can only take you so far. If you can’t push through mentally during the hard moments, then you can’t break a record like this one.”

Both mentally and physically, Capogna got stronger, which allowed him to improve after every workout, increasing the total number of pushups that he did each time around. Eventually, he was able to do so many pushups that he officially broke the world record for most chest-to-ground pushups in one hour with 884, which later turned into 1,530 on February 17th, 2025.

During the many instances when he tried to break the record, Capogna never quit, which is displayed by his fantastic results that were recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records.

With Capogna already breaking the chest-to-ground pushup record three times, one big question remains – Will he try to break it a fourth time? The answer is an emphatic “yes.” Capogna stated that he is aiming to once again break the record in 2026, which represents the 250th anniversary of 1776, the year the United States of America gained its independence and became a country. Fittingly, Capogna intends to complete 1,776 chest-to-ground pushups in an hour, which would further his previous world record of 1,530.

Can he conquer the challenge again in 2026? Only time will tell. For now, Capogna will continue his rigorous training regimen in hopes of breaking this world record for the fourth time in his life.