Certain careers such as the military, police and firefighting require that you take and pass a fitness assessment test before you can be employed. Assessments ensure that you have the level of fitness needed to do the job. Doctors also use fitness assessments to evaluate a patient's health. Fitness trainers assess fitness to help individuals set goals for improvement, as well as track their progress. There are five main types of fitness that tests assess.
Body Composition
Body composition or percentage of total body fat is usually measured by estimating your body mass index, or BMI. You can do this by taking your weight in pounds and dividing it by your height in inches squared. Multiply that number by 703. You can also use a caliper to take skin fold measurements. Males are measured at the triceps, scapula and chest at the pectoral site. Measurements for a female are taken at the triceps, suprailiac and abdomen. All measurements should be taken on the right side of the body.
Aerobic Capacity
There are several ways to evaluate a person's aerobic capacity, also known as cardiovascular endurance. For an employment assessment, you may be asked to walk on a treadmill or jog while your heart rate is monitored. The tests are used to calculate target heart rate in order to estimate maximum aerobic capacity. This measures the highest level of oxygen consumed during moderate-intensity exercise. MayoClinic.com suggests walking for a mile. Take your pulse both before and after. Time how long it takes you to walk the mile.
Muscular Strength
Seeing how many push-ups you can do within two minutes is one assessment used to evaluate muscle strength. As you increase your muscle strength, you should be able to do more push-ups within a shorter period of time. Another way to measure muscle strength is by lifting weights. Strength is measured by how much weight you can lift.
Muscular Endurance
Muscular endurance is the ability of a muscle group to keep up an activity for an extended period of time. Endurance is often measured by the number of repetitions of an exercise you can do. For example, as part of a muscular endurance test you might be asked to leg press 50 percent of your body weight. Callisthenic-type exercises are also used to measure muscular endurance.
Flexibility
Flexibility can be measured by the sit-and-reach assessment test. Tape a yardstick to the floor at the 15-inch mark. With the soles of your feet lined with the mark, reach forward as far as you can and then measure the distance. The person assessing your fitness may hold down your knees to keep them from moving. Perform the test a total of three times and record the best of the three reaches.
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