Hi trmiv,
“Pushback” is really a misnomer and is just another term that some people use to describe the “resilience” or “springiness” of a material … sometimes in combination with the pressure they are experiencing in certain parts of the body or with shear forces on the sleeping surface (see post #18 here) and latex in general is the most resilient of all the foam materials (although springs are more resilient than latex and some types of latex are more resilient than others). Resilience is related to the ability of a material to store and return energy and is measured by the percentage of the rebound when a steel ball is dropped on a material rather than its opposite which is hysteresis which is the ability of a material to absorb energy. Lower resilience and higher hysteresis produces less bounce.
Resilience is something that you can only feel with movement because when your body is at rest on a mattress the compression forces of your body pushing down are balanced by the increasing resistive forces of the mattress (regardless of the resilience of the materials in the mattress) and there is no longer any “direction” to the forces which are in equilibrium.
What some people describe as “pushback” can also be related to feeling either unfamiliar or uncomfortable pressure in certain parts of the body where it “feels like” a mattress is pushing back in an area that you may be experiencing more pressure or “resistance” from the material than you are used to because different materials or types of mattresses can distribute your weight across the sleeping surface in different ways.
While resilience also has very little to do with overall “comfort” (which is very subjective and relative to each person’s preferences) or with pressure relief or pressure points (which has much more to do with the point elasticity and ability of a material to contour to a body shape, the firmness of a material, and the thickness of the comfort layers … see post #4 here) … resilience can affect the ease of movement on a mattress because less resilient materials such as memory foam that “store” energy rather than “return” energy can feel more “motion restricting” than more resilient foam materials or components and a lack of resilience or “bounce” can also affect some of the “other” activities that can happen on a mattress for some people as well (see post #2 here).
In other words … the resilience or “springiness” of a material is just one of many preference choices that can affect the more subjective “feel” of a mattress and not a “better/worse” choice. Some people just prefer more resilient materials and some people prefer less resilient materials in their mattress.
There is also more about “pushback” in post #2 here and at the end of post #11 here.
In the end the only way to know whether a mattress will be a good “match” for you in terms of PPP (Posture and alignment, Pressure relief, and Personal preferences) or whether it will be more or less resilient than you prefer will be based on your own personal experience
Phoenix