Resting is allowed. Count the number of times your right or left knee reaches the mark. Stop after two minutes and record your score. Individuals ages 65 and older should aim for around repetitions.
Sit in a chair with your palms facing your side with your upper arm braced against your body. As you curl, focus the movement to your lower arm and rotate your hand so your palm is facing you upon completion of the motion and slowly return to the starting position. Complete as many curls as you can in 30 seconds. Individuals ages 65 and older should aim for between 15 — 20 repetitions. Eight-Foot-Up-and-Go Measures coordination and agility. There is wide of range of standardized tests used for these exams, some of which are intended for medical purposes and others of which establish whether you are qualified to participate such as with the Army combat readiness test.
For general health and fitness purposes, the tests are considered the starting point for designing an appropriate exercise program. Before starting a fitness program, it is important to share your medical history with your trainer and to get the necessary approvals from your doctor to proceed. Most fitness specialists will use one or more screening tools to help determine your baseline health. This may include obtaining vital sign measurements such as your height, weight, resting heart rate RHR , and resting blood pressure RBP.
Many trainers will also use a physical activity readiness questionnaire PAR-Q comprised of seven or more questions related to your general health. Body composition describes the different components that make up your total body weight, including your muscles, bones, and fat. The most common methods for estimating body composition include:. Cardiovascular endurance testing, also known as stress testing, measures how efficiently your heart and lungs work to supply oxygen and energy to your body during physical activity.
Among the three most common tests used:. Some trainers will incorporate exercises such as sit-ups or push-ups to get a qualitative measurement of how you respond to specific exercises. These baseline results can be used at a later date to see if your health and fitness levels have improved. Strength testing measures the maximal amount of force a muscle group can exert at one time. The exercises used include the push-up test and core strength and stability test.
In some cases, a trainer will use a metronome to see how long can you keep up with the rhythm. The results are then compared to people of the same age group and sex to establish your baseline levels. Strength and endurance tests are valuable as they help the trainer pinpoint which muscle groups are stronger and which are vulnerable and in need of focused attention. There are a variety of tests used to measure flexibility including:.
Get exercise tips to make your workouts less work and more fun. Purposes of assessment. National Strength and Conditioning Association. What are the assessment exercises for physical fitness? Learn how to conduct a fitness assessment easily by reading the guide below and then when you are ready to learn more about a fitness business management software option that includes features to record, track, and share fitness and performance assessments, schedule a demo with the Exercise. Because even better than a fitness assessment form in PDF or Excel is fitness assessment software that makes creating health and fitness assessments easy.
You can create fitness assessments online and deliver them to hundreds and even thousands of clients in an automated and scalable fashion so you can grow your fitness business.
A fitness assessment is a test or measurement completed by a fitness professional to get fitness or health information about a clien t. It can be biometric related to the body or assess the current level of fitness. Client questionnaires can serve as an assessment to collect personal information or additional health information.
Many fitness assessments test one or more of the components of fitness. The different components of fitness are cardiorespiratory endurance also sometimes called aerobic fitness , muscular strength, muscular endurance muscular strength and endurance are sometimes combined into muscular fitness , flexibility, and body composition. Some fitness assessments may also test balance, stability, mobility, or other sports or performance skills such as power or agility.
There are benefits and limitations to all fitness assessments. Some use little to no equipment, while some use expensive equipment. Some require trained fitness professionals to conduct, some are easily administered by anyone as long as they can follow the instructions. The prices that are charged for fitness assessments vary greatly. Some fitness facilities and personal trainers will include them when a client purchases a training package or membership, while some will charge an additional fee for fitness assessments.
Here are some general tips for performing basic fitness assessments. Fitness assessment manuals or references will have specific instructions for each assessment that you should become familiar with before using them with clients. Starting with a basic fitness assessment PDF is fine but using fitness assessment software to automate the delivery will make your life easier and allow you to track advanced metrics over time.
This will allow you to do what you do best and train clients vs spending all of your time on data entry. Here are some tips for performing a basic fitness assessment:. There are many reasons why fitness assessments are important. They do not take a lot of time to complete but can provide a wealth of information and help you get to know your clients better.
Here are a few reasons why fitness assessments are important:. There are some basic measurements that provide good baseline measurements and enable trainers and clients to track progress. These measurements require minimal and inexpensive equipment, are quick to administer, and are easily interpreted. These anthropometric measures include height, weight, blood pressure, resting heart rate, waist circumference, and hip circumference.
Minimal equipment is needed and these can be completed quickly. Resting heart rate can then be used to calculate the target heart rate range for clients as they are exercising. There are different methods for doing so, like the age-predicted HRmax equation, the Karvonen method, or the Tanaka method.
BMI has some advantages as well as some disadvantages. BMI is only based on height and weight so it does not consider muscle or lean body tissue vs. While BMI is not as accurate as other measures, it is a good screening tool and can provide a baseline measurement. Follow the procedures for collecting the skinfold measurements and use the calculations for that procedure.
Bioelectrical impedance analysis BIA is another method that uses additional equipment. BIA tends to have some inaccuracy but can serve as a comparison from baseline to a future assessment. These tend to be more accurate than BMI, but less accurate than some more specialized and expensive measures.
It is worth emphasizing that the amount of physical activity required to cause a significant improvement in physical fitness in a well-nourished individual, and to maintain this state, need be no more than perhaps half an hour per day, if the exercise is sufficiently intense. Such an increase does not, therefore, necessarily have a large influence on levels of total daily energy expenditure. One example of this is the case of men doing extremely heavy labour in a steel mill, where work requirements were such that these men needed to be big, muscular, strong individuals.
The total duration of this very heavy work however, was only about 30 to 40 minutes per day, and thus total daily energy expenditure of these men was no higher than that of men working at only low-to-moderate levels of activity in a conveyor-belt factory. At the other extreme, many jobs necessitate continuous physical activity of moderate intensity for most of the working day, and the energy expended may be high even though the individuals do not need to have a high level of fitness to do this sort of work.
Physical activity is therefore of importance primarily because it is the most fundamental factor affecting energy expenditure. This chapter will examine ways in which energy expenditure can be measured, and why and when such measurements are useful. Occasionally physical activity may need careful examination in situations where it may appear so excessive as to shorten working life, or where the constant fatigue resulting from it may attenuate the enjoyment of leisure time.
The concept of "physical fitness" is quite broad; and an individual may be fit to perform one given physical task but not another. However, physiologists commonly limit the definition of physical fitness to mean the fitness to endure physical tasks of moderate to high intensity. Such tasks involve movements of large muscle masses, as in walking, running, cycling.
In this context, physical fitness depends largely on the adequacy of the oxygen transport and oxygen utilization systems in the body. Thus it is also common to refer to physical fitness as "aerobic fitness" or "aerobic capacity" While physical fitness is frequently measured in physiological and sport investigations, it has rarely been a part of studies on the investigation of nutritional status. Yet a measurement of physical fitness can provide very useful information on groups of individuals where ordinary criteria of nutritional status may be inadequate.
For example, some populations e. Such findings imply that low energy and protein intakes and low quantities of body fat probably are not indicative of significant nutritional deficiency. For working adults, a measurement of exercise capacity or fitness is also useful in assessing the degree of physical stress on the individual imposed by any strenuous activity required by the occupation.
Thus, there are physiologically acceptable standards within which an individual can be expected to work without suffering undue stress or fatigue, and these can be determined relatively easily when there may be concern about whether or not work is unjustifiably onerous. Measurements of physical fitness can easily be carried out on children as young as five or six, as well as on adults, and the use of such measurements should be encouraged in intensive nutritional investigations of populations.
This chapter is divided into two separate sections: one on the measurement of energy expenditure, mainly from the aspect of the importance of physical activity, and the other on the assessment of physical fitness or physical working capacity.
Measurements of energy expenditure in free-living populations are difficult, laborious, and expensive and can usually be done on only relatively small numbers of individuals. It is therefore necessary to be sure that it is essential, or at least highly desirable, to measure energy expenditure before embarking on this onerous task. Energy expenditure has almost certainly not been measured often enough in field conditions when it would have provided very important additional information, and sometimes it has been measured in situations where its intrinsic value has been comparatively small.
Thus it is the purpose of this section to provide some brief guidelines on the use and misuse of energy expenditure measurements. Methodological problems affecting its usage are dealt with in another section. In general, if knowledge is needed about energy requirements of populations on which a certain amount of relevant information already exists; energy requirements can be measured more easily and possibly more accurately by measuring energy intake.
In such a population, energy expenditure studies might indicate the exact ways in which alterations in energy requirements have occurred, but they are not essential for the primary purpose. In most situations, energy intake measurements will also estimate energy expenditure because, other than for very brief periods of up to a few days, these two must be in balance or else body weight will be steadily increasing or decreasing.
If body weight is approximately stable, energy intake must be roughly equal to energy expenditure. This illustration applies especially to the developed countries. By contrast, it can be argued that when energy requirements are being assessed in developing countries, it is essential that energy expenditure studies be attempted.
The reasons are multiple. For many population groups in developing countries, food in adequate quantities may not be available. If food intake alone is measured, true energy requirements may not be obtained. When energy expenditure is measured, better information is gathered; this is particularly important in providing essential "base-line" data that will later allow an evaluation to be made of the effect of food supplementation.
For example, since for a large majority of people the work situation is the critical factor in maintaining their living standard, energy may well be expended to produce the necessary work output-in subsistence farming, paid labour, caring for the household, etc.
In such cases, measuring the total daily energy expenditure will not necessarily provide much better information than measuring total daily energy intake: they will both represent a quantity less than the desirable energy needs for that group. On the other hand, the measurement of the energy expended in work will allow the calculation of an additional amount to cover an acceptable allowance for non-occupational activities.
A total daily requirement can then be estimated that will be sufficient for a reasonable way of life for these populations. Only energy expenditure measurements will permit this situation to be properly assessed. The assessment of the effects of food supplements can be considerably improved by measuring total daily energy expenditure. Such information can indicate not only whether total energy expenditure may have increased during work, but also whether changes have taken place in the type and duration of leisure activities.
As an extension of this, only by measuring energy expenditure. Such information will also add considerably to our knowledge of how life styles and activity patterns may be interpreted in populations where limited food availability may be almost the permanent state, but where obvious signs of malnutrition may not exist.
In the assessment of seasonal factors where food availability may vary from relative plenty to comparative scarcity, measuring energy expenditure as well as food intake will also indicate the degree of energy excess or deficit at different times of the year. This occurs in many communities where hard agricultural labour may be necessary at times of the year when food is not plentiful, while at other seasons food is more or less abundant when labour is not so intense.
Longitudinal studies of energy expenditure and energy balance are also necessary for assessing the real energy requirements for pregnancy and lactation. Only by measuring populations who differ in nutritional status and environmental situations can it be determined how much extra food is needed by pregnant and lactating women, and how much of the "extra" energy is compensated for by physiological change in the energy output of physical activity.
In other words, the physiological or "natural" reduction in physical activity in the later stages of pregnancy and in lactation has to be measured before it is possible to form a reasonably accurate estimate of the real extra needs of the pregnant or lactating woman, and therefore of the likely effect of food aid to these groups.
A certain amount of sociologically important information can be obtained by measuring energy expenditure. The pattern of life and its energy variability can be measured. Finally knowledge can be gained about the physiological stress-primarily in the work situation but also in certain leisure pursuits-of strenuous activity to the individual by measuring energy expenditure. Especially in developing countries, many aspects of work require considerable physical effort.
Only by measuring these can the stress to the individual be assessed and allowances attempted for them. Many of these suggestions imply large amounts of new knowledge, and many more measurements of energy expenditure in field conditions, particularly in the developing countries, are needed. It is critical that new, improved techniques for doing this be developed. However, some caution is needed in attempting to use energy expenditure measurements alone to determine whether or not work productivity may have been improved by food aid programmes.
Theoretically this might be possible; but in practice, in a changing situation such as when extra food is provided, work output is affected by so many factors that proper controls over a sufficiently long period become impossible.
General comments on methodology The practical advice given below suggests various general viewpoints and describes the different techniques. It is addressed primarily to the investigator who is relatively inexperienced in measuring energy expenditure in man. Although the techniques are described and references are given to books or monographs that provide some detail of the methods, it is often desirable that experience should be gained initially under the guidance of an experienced scientist with extensive knowledge of field conditions.
There are many pitfalls in the assessment of human energy expenditure in field situations. This section attempts to indicate these pitfalls and potential sources of error, to warn against unjustifiable conclusions from the results.
Need for an Energy Supply to the Body Energy must always be available to the body if normal life is to continue. This is delivered in the form of food, of which the energy-providing nutrients are carbohydrate, fat, protein, and alcohol. The energy of these nutrients is liberated by chemical changes that require the supply of oxygen to the tissues.
Energy is needed for: the resting metabolic rate of the body, which includes tissue maintenance and the internal work of the body the beating of the heart, movements of the respiratory muscles, kidney function, and the chemical constancy of the cells and tissue fluids and incidentally leads to the release of considerable quantities of heat; physical activity or muscular work of any kind; growth in the young; pregnancy or lactation; or increasing muscle mass; the deposition of adipose tissue.
There are considerable differences in the relative energy requirements, the four sets of factors mentioned above. The resting metabolic rate or the " basal metabolic rate , " may represent a considerable proportion of the total energy expended by a man. The energy required by physical activity or muscular work of any kind depends upon several variables, such as the type of movement, the muscle masses involved and the duration of the activity.
If only energy expenditure is relevant, it may be very important to distinguish clearly and objectively between the different influences of a short strenuous burst of exercise and of long-continued mild activity.
For example, 30 minutes of "very heavy" work would require an expenditure of perhaps an extra kcal 1. The contrast between the vigorous, exhausting exercise on the one hand and the gentle, unhurried routine on the other may tend to deceive us in our assessment of their relative importance for energy expenditure.
Similarly, certain types of movement, if they involve relatively small muscle masses for example, one arm , or if they are performed in an awkward or inefficient manner, may be very fatiguing for the individual but may require only small amounts of energy expenditure.
Therefore, objective measurement should be done wherever possible. If measurement is very difficult. Occasionally, helpful information may be gleaned from reviews see Spitzer and Hettinger or Durnin and Passmore in the Bibliography that have collected and tabulated data for many different forms of occupational and leisure activities.
These values for energy expenditure may be applied, where appropriate, to individuals or population groups, but this requires fairly extensive knowledge and experience of the levels and the variability of energy expenditure. Pregnancy and lactation may be difficult conditions to assess in relation to energy expenditure. This change in the pattern of daily life may also occur in lactation, so these are situations that are perplexing to evaluate in general terms and may pose considerable problems in measurement.
The other category of "growth" in this section is the increase in muscle mass that sometimes occurs in individuals who are engaged in recent hard physical exercise. The exercise has to be of comparatively recent inception or it must be of steadily increasing severity, or else the body reaches a state of equilibrium where no further addition to muscle mass occurs.
Even where such exercise is exceptionally strenuous, and considerable increases in muscle are taking place, the extra energy required is only moderate. About 5 kcal 21 KJ of energy are needed for every gram of tissue deposited.
Deposition of adipose tissue will also require extra energy but again will be of small consequence in relation to the total daily energy expenditure. An increase in body fat during adulthood is almost the norm in all societies whose way of life is largely sedentary and where food availability is not unduly restricted.
Usually, the increase in adipose tissue is gradual, even though it may sometimes reach considerable proportions. The conclusion that may reasonably be derived from the above account is that the most important factors in determining the mean energy expenditures of an individual during an average day are his resting metabolic rate and the type and duration of physical activity.
If the occupation alone is being examined, or if specific periods of daily life are to be evaluated, again, the type and duration of physical activity are the most relevant factors. Change in body weight, due either to growth or other causes, is likely to be quite unimportant and may usually be ignored unless it occurs over a relatively short period of time. Implications of the Levels of Accuracy Attainable in Measuring Energy Expenditure in Man In attempting to measure energy expenditure in man, we are often placed in a dilemma because of the potential importance of small quantities of total daily energy.
With present techniques, it is difficult to make measurements of daily energy expenditure where the end-result will have an accuracy of less than kcal 0. Nevertheless, if this standard is not attained, the implications should be clearly understood when deductions from the results are to be applied either to large communities or to the individual.
Two examples demonstrate this: 1. These examples of course oversimplify the situation, but they illustrate the importance of understanding the level of accuracy required when certain conclusions need to be drawn from the data. Also, it is not possible to rely on a randomization of error if an inaccurate technique is used.
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