Incredibly Simple Fitness Tests for Beginners

[toc]

What Is a Fitness Assessment?

You can think of a fitness assessment as a medical examination to assess how well your body is responding to a new fitness program, and whether or not you’re doing the right things.

There are many different ways that fitness assessments can be used, but some of the most common ones are called body fat percentage, heart rate monitoring, and treadmill tests.

Most people like to keep track of their progress when they begin a new fitness program, but they find the task difficult because they’ve never done one themselves. So they’re not sure where to begin or how to figure out their current fitness level, or how strong they are or how weak.

Why Are They Important?

Many people have lost their motivation to get in shape because they can’t tell if their fitness program is working. Fitness assessments can help you figure out if your program is working and if you are on the right track. If your fitness level isn’t improving, you need to change something.

This is why fitness assessments are important. They gauge your overall health and when you exercise regularly and correctly, all of that physical activity creates good health.

You shouldn’t care about how young or old you are, or what your gender is. You can just use these basic assessments to tailor-fit your training program to your specific needs.

Things to Consider Before Giving a Fitness Assessment

Before giving a fitness assessments are a fairly simple process. Here are some things you need to think about before you give one.

What’s the purpose of your fitness assessment?

You should know the main purpose of your assessment by asking yourself questions like; What do you want to learn from it? What questions do you want answered?

For example, if you want to see how your cardiovascular system is working and you want to be able to work out more, you may want to perform a cardiovascular exam to see how well your body uses oxygen during your workout. With this information, you can decide whether you need to incorporate more or less cardio fitness in your program.

How will your results be used?

You need to know how the results of your fitness assessment will be used.

Will you use the information to make minor changes to your program without altering it? If you are using your results to just find out what your fitness level is and you don’t want to change your program, you can use the information to increase the intensity of your fitness program without changing its core details.

Will you use the information to give your doctor a better understanding of your fitness level? If you are planning to see your doctor and are using the results to help your doctor understand your fitness level, you will need to discuss the results with him/her.

How can you use one as a learning tool and as a support for your fitness program?

If you know your results, you can adjust your workouts to improve your training workouts. For example, if you want to increase your cardio by implementing walking, running, and cycling after getting bad scores on your cardiovascular Endurance results.

How valid will it be? They can be very subjective, so you need to be sure that you have questions answered. You want to know what the standards are, whether you can use any results that are questionable. What I mean by that is if you performed all the exercises correctly without cheating yourself.

For example, sometimes people like to count a “half try” as a complete rep and add it to their score.

What kinds of questions will provide information on what you know and don’t know, and where you need to go next?

When you receive your results, you will want to have specific questions in mind about how you are doing. You may want to ask the following questions:

How was it? Was my body fat percentage and body weight compared to the average? Did I complete it correctly?

Will you use multiple assessments and if so, from which will you choose?

There are a lot of fitness assessments on the market today, and some of them are pretty bad. This is why it’s important to know which are reputable and which ones are not. I would recommend that you choose one that is recognized and recommended.

How will you use it to verify your self-assessment and monitor your progress toward your targets/goals/objectives?

If you are an elite athlete, you will want to make sure that your results can be used as evidence to support your self-assessment. You may also want to have a fitness assessment done before an event that you will be competing in so that you can use it to validate your self-assessment.

Does the investment of time in preparing, administering and recording your physical fitness scores pay off for you?

The investment of time that you have put into your examination and getting your fitness assessment is worthwhile when and if you’ve achieved your goals, and improved your physical fitness level. This is something you will know down the road if you’re just starting in a new fitness program.

How Many Should You Take? You can give as many as you want but you have to be consistent with them. This is because the tests are meant to assess your progress.

Types of Fitness Assessments

There’s many different types of assessments and variations that you can do depending on what you’re trying to achieve, they can include:

Cardiovascular Endurance Exams

Cardiovascular endurance checks is a process of exercising for longer and harder than you normally would. It is mainly done to calculate what your maximum heart rate is and how healthy your body is.

This may include exercises like the:

Running
Diesel Engine
Mountain Climber
Running Endurance
Swimming
Aerobic Endurance

Suggested Reading: 31 Speed Training Exercises To Become Faster

Lower Body Strength and Conditioning Exam

The lower body strength and conditioning checks can help measure how strong your lower body is. They are used in many athletic programs to help athletes determine their strengths and weaknesses.

Strength and conditioning might be used with:

Squats
Weighted Jumping
Weighted Squats
Calf Raises

Aerobic Endurance Examinations

Aerobic endurance is a benchmark way to measure your physical fitness and is defined as the capacity of the human body to resist fatigue during continuous prolonged muscular work. If you want to find how fit you are, you need to take one.

They can be done with the:

Cycling
5 Minute Walk
10 Minute Run
2 Minute Run

Upper Body Strength and Conditioning Exams

Many athletes use these for determining their fitness for various sports. They isolate upper body strength and evaluates a person’s strength and endurance through a variety of positions and movement.

Typical upper body and conditioning include the:

Bicep Curls
Triceps Push-Ups
Standing Press-Ups
Push-Ups
Bench Press
Military Press
Hand Release Push-Ups

Tightness & Flexibility

Flexibility is one of the most important factors in fitness. If you want to be healthy, you need to be flexible. Without flexibility, you will get injured more easily.

To assess your flexibility from head to toe, do these checks:

Flexibility for Your Spine and Neck
Flexibility for Your Shoulders
Flexibility for Your Outer Hips and Spine
Flexibility for Your Hip Rotators
Flexibility for Your Hamstrings
Flexibility for Your Calves and Ankles

Neuro/Muscular Fitness Exams

Here you assess your body and brain for central nervous system & muscle control, flexibility, hand-eye coordination, as well as your muscular endurance.

They help to assess the state of the brain and how well it is working, and how well your body has responded to physical activity. There are different types that take place to help assess the different parts of the brain and body.

Below are some nuero/muscular exams:

Sufficient Motor Strength
Speed
Coordination
Concentration
Attention
Sufficient Visual Skills
Insight and Apprehension
Memory
Decision Making Skills

4 Elements of a Great Fitness Assessment

It is important that the one you’ve decided to take is carried out in a healthy, safe environment. A great fitness assessment should be realistic, relevant to your goals, and have a practical approach.

Also, it should cover the most relevant aspects of fitness because it will help you to get in the best shape of your life. Try your best to use one that is quick and easy to carry out.

This is what you should aim for in each upcoming functional fitness assessment.

Health Evaluation

The only way to determine if you’re improving is to assess your overall health. If you need an in-depth health assessment to measure and evaluate your whole body, get one that’s comprehensive. These are some aspects that could be included in your assessment:

- - - Fatigue, Resting Heart Rate (HR)
    - Muscular Strength, Pulse Rate (PPR)
    - Cardiovascular Health (Blood Pressure, Heart Rate, Blood Circulation)

Body Composition Check

Your body composition determines your health and fitness level by indicating your body fat percentage. The muscle-to-fat ratio (muscle mass divided by fat mass) tells you how much muscle you have and how much fat you have. More muscle and less fat means better health for you.

To calculate your body mass index, you can visit the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. The body mass index (BMI) measures your body fat according to your height and weight.

These are the BMI categories and how they are rated. They’re only dependent on height & weight, muscle mass & fat mass are not included in the calculations. That’s the only drawback with these figures.

- - - Under 18.5 = underweight
    - 18.5 to 24.9 = healthy weight
    - 25.0 to 29.9 = overweight
    - 30.0+ = obese

Cardiovascular Endurance

This is how much endurance you have during exercise. You should know how much oxygen & energy is supplied to your body during intense physical activity. To determine your cardiovascular endurance, you’ll need to be evaluated on your maximal aerobic capacity (VO2 max), the max rate of oxygen that you use.

Functional Exam

To determine your functional fitness, you’ll need to perform one for your strength, speed, power, and flexibility. The idea here is to use this part to figure out what areas to target in your fitness program.

Now we need to cover some of the consequences that plague many people from a bad assessment experience.

Common Consequences of Bad Fitness Assessments

Poor assessment results will impact your current physical fitness level, as well as your future fitness level and physical capabilities. This will impact your overall health and it’s a good idea to consult your doctor if you have any health conditions that may prevent you from performing any of these functional fitness assessments.

Poor assessment results will impact your current confidence level, as well as your future fitness level and physical capabilities. This will impact your overall health and it’s a good idea to consult your doctor if you have any health conditions that may prevent you from performing any of these functional fitness assessments.

Undermine your efforts by showing you that there’s been no progress. low progress, or that you’re regressing and losing fitness. This will give you the impression that you’re not improving after all the effort you’ve put into your training and you’ll become upset.

Loss of motivation due to these bad results may reinforce your previous presumptions that exercising is just not for you. These poor assessments will be what you reference to support how you’ve restricted yourself from completing your fitness goals.

You may feel embarrassed about your results and would rather not share them with others who already know about them before you took it. It can cause embarrassment and anxiety. In your mind, you’re afraid to let anyone see how much you’ve not improved. You may feel that you’ll be judged or looked down upon.

This may lead someone to stop working out or exercising altogether.

Physical Activity Recommendations for Different Age Groups

According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the following is the recommended physical activities for the different age groups.

Children between the ages of 3 to 5 years – Children should be physically active every day throughout the day, actively playing in a variety of enjoyable physical activities.

Children and Adolescents between the ages of 6 to 17 years – Children and Adolescents should take part in physical activity that’s mild to an energetic level for a period of one hour or more at least three days a week.

Energetic activities can include things like running, cycling, or soccer.
Muscle strengthening activities can be things like climbing or pushups.
Activities to strengthen bones can be gymnastics or rope jumping.

Adults between the ages of 18 to 64 years – Adults should exercise at medium strength for at least 2.5 hours, 2 days a week to strengthen muscles with exercises such as brisk walking. You should try to exercise at medium strength, the recommended level or as much as you’re able to.

Older Adults at the age of 65 years and older – The older adult’s bracket is the same as the 18 to 64 year old bracket except that you want to implement balance control exercises like standing on one foot.

How Do I Perform a Basic Fitness Assessment?

There are several different ways to use fitness assessments to measure your progress. Some of the most common fitness assessments include body fat percentage, treadmills, heart rate monitoring, and body strength.

The basic fitness assessment you are about to do will give you a better understanding of your fitness level. It is a great benchmark to determine your progress after you start your fitness program, which is going to benefit you greatly in your training process.

You’ll be able to easily record your results without having to use any special equipment. The results you get from your assessment here will be your starting point in understanding your strengths and weaknesses. It will give you the motivation you need, something many people end up losing because they weren’t sure if their fitness program at home was working or not.

This will also help you in setting up your goals and managing the direction your exercise routines will take.

NOTE: Your safety is the most important part of this or any assessment. If you’re new to training and your fitness level is at beginner level, or you’ve been away from your workouts for a while, don’t over do things.

Here’s how to do your physical fitness assessment at home. Choose from the two versions below.

Basic Fitness Assessment Version 1

This assessment is what I used every six months. It’s a good indicator of how much in or out of shape your are. There’s three sections to this and it’s the most basic fitness assessment I can give you, but it’s going work you, so don’t take it lightly and make sure you do them in this order.

They might leave you exhausted for the rest of the day if you’re not in shape. Make sure to drink plenty of water afterwards and throughout the day.

#1 – Upper Body – Do regular pushups by going all the way down to the ground until your nose almost touches the ground and all the way up until your arms are completely extended. Do as many as you’re able to but you want to try and get as close to a count of 100 pushups.

Write down your score count when you’re done and take a 5 to 10 minute break and continue to #2.

#2 – Core, Abdominal & Back – Lay down on your back, put your palms on your thighs, and place your legs at a 90 degree angle with your feet flat on the ground. Perform partial sit-ups by contracting your abs and raising yourself until your fingers reach the top of your knees.

Do as many as you can but make sure you keep proper form throughout your movements. Here want to also try to hit 100 sit-ups.

Write down how many sit-ups you completed and take a 10 minute break and continue to #3.

#3 – Cardiovascular Endurance – You can walk or run a distance of two miles. Your score time here will depending on your age and fitness level. In general, a good score time for someone in their 20s is just under six minutes per mile.

Make sure to time yourself and record your score time down.

Basic Fitness Assessment Version 2

This physical fitness assessment will include cardiovascular endurance, core, upper and lower body strength, and flexibility. It’s really very simple.

Make sure to record down your scores and times because when you decide to redo it, you can compare future results to your initial feedback and check how much you’ve progressed.

#1 – Upper Body – Either do regular or knee pushups by going all the way down to the ground until your nose almost touches the ground and all the way up until your arms are completely extended. This exercise is a good indicator of how strong your upper body is.

Do as many as you’re able to and write it down when you’re done.

Do as many as you can but make sure you keep proper form throughout your movements. Write down how many partial sit-ups you completed.

#3 – Lower Body – Sit on the edge of your chair with your knees at right angles with the ground. You’re going to do squats here. Start by standing up and sitting back down but you’re not going to touch the chair, then quickly get back up.

Keep doing squats until you start losing proper form. Make sure to record your score.

#4 – Flexibility – In the standing position, you’re going to stand with your feet together and legs straight. Then bend at the waist with your palms parallel to the ground and measure how close your palms have reached the ground.

#5- Cardiovascular Endurance – You can walk or run a distance of one mile. Make sure to time yourself and record your time down.

When you’ve completed our basic fitness assessment here, you’re going to repeat this exactly the same way again in eight weeks to check how much progress you’ve made.

In conclusion, I have explained the importance of going through a fitness examination to begin a new fitness routine and how it’s incredibly important for beginners. There are many bad ones out there and more importantly a plethora to consider before taking one.

A great exam will provide an insight into what really is happening inside your body right now and goes well with guiding you in choosing a good lifestyle workout that fits your needs. My hope is that this article has helped you make sense of common questions and answers about fitness assessments.

Get online lab sports examinations sent privately straight to your home from a company called Health Labs. Health Labs can provide private examination options for anyone who participates in combative sports, MMA, boxing, fighting, kickboxing, etc.

Get your examination in private at home and find out where you stand today!