Fitness assessment has become the cornerstone of many different types of fitness programs. From personal training to exercise classes and everything in between, fitness assessment provides the groundwork for healthy living and promotes good health.
The benefits of fitness assessment are many, but before I get into them, I want to make sure you understand why the exercise program is important. Fitness involves both your mind and body. This is why it is so important to get a complete picture of what your goals are.
What is Fitness Assessment?
Before we get into the benefits of fitness assessment, you need to understand exactly what it is. You need to have completed a fitness assessment test, followed by a fitness evaluation. Your fitness assessment is comprised of questions that require your physical strength, flexibility, endurance, and stamina as well as any other areas that can be improved through an exercise program. For example, if you are working to lose weight, you would need to include information on diet and exercise.
Physical Test:
Most people take a physical test first so that they know how much they need to work out. Then, they schedule an exercise program. The only requirement for the assessment is that you must pass the assessment within one minute.
What Are the Components of Fitness Assessment?
Many components of fitness assessment make it a unique, and often important, field. Physical components refer to components of fitness assessment that directly influence a person’s ability to engage in physical activity or to maintain a certain level of physical fitness. These components of fitness can be categorized in many ways.
- For instance, some components of fitness assessment focus on the ability to perform an activity by breaking it down into manageable parts, determining your maximum exertion level, and reporting any changes that you might have made to maximize your performance while engaging in the activity.
- Other components of fitness assessment measure the amount of energy expended during activity as well as the amount of time you spend in pursuit of your activity, assess your health-related fitness, or provide information about your health or that of your family members.
- Some of the components of fitness assess the effects of regular physical activity on your health.
- Some components of fitness examine your mental and emotional health, while others examine the effects of your physical fitness on your behavior.
- One component of fitness assesses your muscular strength and flexibility. These measurements are usually included in a physical fitness evaluation. Some components of fitness evaluate your muscular endurance and your flexibility. Components of fitness examine your body’s muscle mass, muscular strength, and flexibility. These components of fitness evaluate how much work you can tolerate, how well you can tolerate stress, and what your maximum tolerance is.
1. Healthy Fitness Zone:
A healthy fitness zone is an area of varying aerobic capacity, which ranges from very light to heavy. Your body typically will not be at its optimum health fitness level if you are outside of your healthy fitness zone. Your doctor will determine your aerobic capacity and your resting metabolic rates, such as a resting heart rate monitor, a pulse oximeter, and a Bi-level infrared camera. This assessment will help your doctor to determine your optimal aerobic capacity.
2. Activity-Specific Fitness Assessment:
An activity-specific fitness assessment is one type of fitness assessment that you will likely receive from your doctor. This type of fitness assessment is typically conducted during your physical assessment. This activity-specific fitness assessment will help your doctor to properly determine your ability to tolerate physical exertion and to perform at your maximum potential for a particular activity or level of physical exertion.
When doing this type of activity-specific fitness assessment, your doctor will take measurements of your heart rate, power, endurance, and flexibility. These measurements will then be compared to your current level of physical exertion and your predicted maximum level of physical exertion for a particular activity.
3. Optimum Level of Activity:
Another component of a fitness assessment is measured functioning at the optimum level of activity. This differs from the previous components of physical fitness assessment because it assesses your capability to perform a particular physical activity at a higher or lower level than your current level of performance. Performing at your maximum level is considered better than performing at a lower level. Your doctor may conduct an individual assessment in conjunction with a performance profile or may combine the components of a physical fitness assessment.
4. Anthropometric Measures
Anthropometric measures were developed to determine optimal body proportions and body mass index for physical activity and physical fitness testing. Skinfold measurement often referred to as anthropometry, determines overall body fat content via the measurement of specific, selective subcutaneous fat sites measured across the body.
Anthropometric measures consist of measurements of both weights, height, and/or circumference to measure body size or measurement. Both measurements can be highly accurate, however, and both provide reasonable estimates of percentage body fat.
A significant limitation of anthropometric measurements is the relatively low accuracy of estimation of percentage body fat from a single measurement.
- Body Composition Analyses (also called Anthropometric Body Analysis) and hydrostatic weighing provide more reliable estimates of percentage body fat from multiple measurements.
- Body Composition Analyses estimate a person’s total body fat content (the sum of all individual components) using specific methodology and criteria.
- Anthropometric Measures for fitness assessment utilize the percentage of body fat that is directly proportional to muscle strength or bone mineral density measured via specific criteria.
- Weight and thickness measurements are used for direct diagnosis of cardiovascular health conditions and to monitor body composition or percentage of body fat.
5. Muscular Strength:
Whether you’re in the gym or out on the trail, your muscular strength and stamina are crucial components of your fitness and injury prevention. But training to increase muscular strength isn’t the same as training for muscular fitness. Muscular strength is simply the maximum amount of force an individual muscle can exert with a single maximal effort.
You can always test yourself at the gym, by either doing steady-state exercise (meaning you’re simply “staying still”) or dynamic activity such as sprinting up hills. You’ll quickly notice that the dynamic (moving) exercise requires significantly more energy than the stationary one. So, while muscular strength for fitness assessment can help you spot improvements in your endurance, it isn’t the most important aspect of your fitness plan. Physical conditioning and muscular strength are vital, but maintaining a healthy lifestyle, and a balanced diet is also critical to your fitness goals.
- If you want to increase your muscular strength for fitness assessment, you should focus on exercises that use large muscles (without causing you any pain).
- These exercises include squats, chest presses, rows, chin-ups, push-ups, and pull-ups. Also, you should consider adding some lower body exercises to your workout (such as crunches, knee lifts, and other movements that train the back muscles).
- Finally, remember to vary your repetitions, sets, and temperature settings between workouts. For example, if you’re working out your arms, you’ll likely work out with three sets of fifteen repetitions. Whereas if you’re working your lower body, you’ll likely do lower reps with three sets of twelve repetitions. Keep these ideas in mind when choosing exercises for muscular strength for a fitness assessment.
6. Muscular Endurance:
If you’re looking for ways to build your muscular endurance, then there are a few different things that you should be aware of. This is an area that a lot of people overlook and as a result, they don’t get the results that they want. It’s a common misconception that you need to hit the gym and train hard to see results. However, it just doesn’t work that way. Instead, you need to look at other forms of exercise that will help you develop this type of endurance.
- For starters, one of the best ways to develop muscular endurance is to lift weights. If you’ve been neglecting your upper body muscles (particularly your back and chest muscles), then lifting weights will help you get these muscles to develop faster. Also, it is a common mistake to completely overlook this factor, particularly if you’re going to the gym just to improve your overall performance in sports.
- In addition to weight lifting, muscular endurance exercises that focus on increasing strength and flexibility can be done at home as well. There are a lot of exercises that can be done for both strength and flexibility, such as handstand push-ups and abdominal crunches. The thing to remember here is that you want to always be performing cardiovascular exercises, whether you’re just trying to strengthen your muscles or increase your cardiovascular endurance – you want to be performing them every day.
7. Cardiorespiratory Fitness:
Cardiorespiratory fitness has a multitude of health, medical, and social benefits. Low levels of CRF are associated with some chronic disease conditions and premature death. Cardiorespiratory fitness is a highly responsive element to cancer prevention and therapy.
And there is increasing evidence that it can also prevent or diminish the effects of common chronic diseases such as diabetes and hypertension. Low levels of cardiac output, or CRF, have been linked to several digestive system problems including irritable bowel syndrome, Crohn’s disease, ulcers, celiac disease, diverticulitis, and diverticulosis (knots inside the colon).
- Cardiorespiratory fitness, (CRF), refers to the ability of the respiratory systems to provide sufficient oxygen to skeletal muscle for energy production required during physical activity.
- Healthy people, at rest, can produce enough energy from their lungs to support their activities for an average of about 7 hours;
- however, for those who are physically active, the amount of oxygen they require to meet their needs decreases significantly as the body adapts to its physical activities.
- It is the energy requirements of older people suffering from chronic illnesses that are most difficult to regulate.
- CRF levels are much lower in healthy persons than in unhealthy persons, despite the increased physical activity and decreased sedentary habits, implying that healthy persons can maintain a high level of CRF without being at risk for developing serious health problems.
- Individuals who suffer from chronic illness, such as congestive heart failure, emphysema, asthma, COPD, or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, should have their cardiorespiratory fitness evaluated to determine if it is sufficient to fulfill their individual needs.
- The American Heart Association recommends that this fitness assessment be done periodically for individuals over 50 years of age.
8. Flexibility:
Flexibility is very important in sporting activities and it gives a good idea about the general health and fitness level of an individual. It is a balance between resistance and flexibility. It is measured with the help of many instruments like force plates, balance boards, etc. The flexibility test for fitness assessment helps in evaluating the flexibility of the body.
- This fitness test measures the ability of the body to stretch and elongate.
- It is a balance between flexibility and resistance.
- It is measured with the help of many instruments like force plates, balance boards, etc.
- The flexibility test for fitness assessment helps in evaluating the flexibility of the body.
- Flexibility tests are generally done while the person is sitting, lying down, or even standing, but it is better to have this test done while the person is standing because of the increased mobility of the upper body when compared to the lying down position.
- The test is normally done on a surface that offers the lowest levels of stretch, such as a couch or bed.
- The most common way to assess the flexibility of the body is to assess the angle formed between the straight line joining the two points, the one that runs through the middle of the top of the foot and ankle.
Conclusion:
Finally, the importance of a fitness assessment should not be underestimated. You can learn a lot about your physical health simply by completing one. Fitness assessment tests are available from a variety of sources, including your doctor, local gym, or even online resources.
For example, if you are suffering from a drug or alcohol addiction, it is very important to make changes in your life that will assist you to overcome your addiction and achieve long-term recovery. You can even get better results regarding what type of physical assessment test you should need to take. Take a look at different assessment tests and keep yourself healthy and fit.
