Ellen DeGeneres may have been known for her wild antics and pranks on The Ellen Show but that doesn’t mean everyone was a fan.
During a recent session on Amy Poehler’s Good Hang podcast, former First Lady Michelle Obama expressed her thoughts on the challenges of growing older.
The conversation turned to shoulder pain, prompting Poehler to inquire whether Obama could still perform push-ups. This question brought back memories for the former First Lady of her 2012 appearance on The Ellen Show.
Obama acknowledged, “Now I do them on my knees. I don’t need to do traditional push-ups anymore. I’ve got nothing to prove about that. I still can, but it’s tough for me. My arms don’t extend all the way down. Funny enough, it was Ellen who noticed this when she challenged me to a push-up contest during my first term.”
Obama wryly pointed out, “I’m the first lady, you know.”
She continued, “And she heard that I worked out. So I’m on her show doing push-ups and I did more push-ups than her but she still says I didn’t go down all the way. Anatomically, I don’t think I can. My arms are very long and she’s a much smaller person than me.”
Obama did, in fact, beat DeGeneres during that challenge with 25 push-ups. She even began teasing DeGeneres during the challenge.
“It depends on how your back is,” she told DeGeneres at the time. “I know that you have these back issues.” Obama’s comment fired DeGeneres up as she proceeded to take her jacket off for the challenge.
The former first lady told DeGeneres that she decided to stop at 25 push-ups but she could have kept going, to which DeGeneres fired back, “I thought it wouldn’t be good to show off the first lady so I stopped.”
As Obama and the audience laughed, she added, “Because I thought, ‘This looks bad that I’m going to beat her.’”
