Blog

You are currently viewing 3 easy ways to test your fitness

3 easy ways to test your fitness

How do you know if you’re fit? Or at least fit enough? And how can you tell if your fitness is improving?

You should test yourself. And although most people haven’t taken a fitness assessment since the President’s Physical Fitness Test in high school, it’s good to check in on your progress every now and then.

“It’s so important to know that what you’re doing is working,” said Matt Fitzgerald, coach and author of Run Like a Pro (Even If You’re Slow) . “Then you can of course adjust if what you’re doing isn’t working.”

In fact, some experts say that self-testing every three to six months can tell you more about your fitness than looking at daily results, which often vary widely. While fitness can be measured—and expressed—in many ways, here are three tests designed to track strength and cardiovascular fitness that can be done with little or no equipment.

• The Dead Hang for grip strength

• Cooper’s Cardiovascular Fitness Test

• The core strength board

Greater grip strength is associated with lower rates of heart and respiratory disease, cancer, and a reduction in all-cause mortality. The correlation is so strong that one group of experts recently called for it to be considered a way to measure overall health, like blood pressure or heart rate.

Not only is grip strength important for countless everyday tasks, like opening jars and carrying groceries, but it’s also a good measure of your overall strength. “As you train and improve the rest of your muscle fitness, your grip strength should move along,” said Luke Baumgartner, an exercise testing expert at the University of Memphis.

To perform the test, you only need a pull-up bar and a stopwatch.

For men, anything from zero to 30 seconds should be considered beginner level, said Matthias Sorensen, an exercise physiologist at the Center for Human Performance at the University of California, San Francisco. Between 30 and 60 seconds can be considered intermediate and more than 60 seconds advanced. For women, Mr. Sorensen said, zero to 20 seconds for beginners, up to 40 seconds for intermediate and more than 40 seconds for advanced.

If you can’t hang from a pull-up bar at all or don’t have access to one, you can also test your grip strength with a farmer’s carry, which involves picking up a dumbbell or dumbbell in each hand and transitioning to a walk. Start with whatever you can carry for 90 seconds—and increase the weight as you get stronger. A very good score for men and women, Mr. Sorensen said, is to carry 70 percent of your body weight for 90 seconds.

Since your grip will improve with your overall strength, you can also develop it by free-weight training using dumbbells, barbells, or kettlebells.

Aerobic fitness is associated with longevity and lower rates of cardiovascular disease, all-cause mortality, and cancer.

The best way to measure this is by testing your VO2 max, or how much oxygen your body uses during exercise. This usually involves going into a lab and exercising to exhaustion.

But you can get an idea of ​​it yourself with Cooper’s test.

Getting your VO2 max estimate requires a bit of math. Take your distance (in miles), multiply it by 35.97, and then subtract 11.29. This is your VO2 max estimate. You can also plug your distance into an online calculator and compare your results to those in your age group.

For example, 1.5 miles in 12 minutes corresponds to a VO2 max of about 43. This would be excellent for a 65-year-old man, good at 45, and average at 25. For a woman, a score of 35 would be excellent at 65, good at 45 and average at 25.

To know more about your age group, check here.

If you want to improve your performance, Mr. Fitzgerald recommends slightly increasing what experts call training volume, or the number of workouts in a typical week. For example, jog four times a week instead of three, but at a low intensity instead of a moderate one. Then, about once a week, start a shorter, high-intensity run. Spending more time training at a slower pace means your body can fully recover before your next run, leading to better overall performance, he said.

That way, when it’s time to pick up the pace, “you just have something to give and so you get more out of that session,” Mr. Fitzgerald said.

A strong core can prevent injuries, reduce back pain and help you exercise better. One of the easiest ways to test your core strength is to simply hold a plank for a while.

To perform the test, all you need is a flat surface. But a yoga mat can make it more comfortable.

A good goal for men and women of any age, Mr. Baumgartner said, is to hold a plank for at least a minute. More than three minutes is exceptional.

If you can’t hold a plank for a minute, it’s a good idea to start working on your core strength, Mr. Baumgartner said.

To build your core, start by determining your maximum hold time. Then do two to three sets of plank holds a few times a week, adding 5 to 10 percent of that time for each until you consistently hit one minute, Mr. Sorensen said. Then continue to slowly add to the time to further increase your strength.

You can also incorporate squats, push-ups, and bridges into your workouts two to three times a week to improve your core strength, or try activities like biking, kayaking, dancing, barre classes, or swimming.

Whatever your score, it’s important not to fixate on your score, Mr. Baumgartner said. The point is to constantly test yourself to track improvement.

“The result is not a judgment on you,” he said, “it’s a snapshot in time.”

Hilary Achauer is a freelance writer covering health and fitness.

Tags: , , ,

Leave a Reply