Fitness Assessment Tips & Hints

Fitness assessments are quite useful for measuring your progress and reaching your fitness goals. You can do these assessments at home or have a trainer do them for you at a gym. Create a spreadsheet to use for comparing your data over the years. Your fitness assessments can include anthropometric data like circumference and percent body fat, and performance data like muscular endurance or aerobic endurance. The most important quality of your fitness assessment is that it be consistent and measured with the same tools each time.

Circumference

General body measurements are a typical component of most fitness assessments. Use the same measuring tools every time you measure. Take these measurements first thing in the morning after a bathroom visit and before eating or drinking anything.
Measure your key body parts from top to bottom holding your tummy in for all abdominal areas: chest (at the nipple line for men, at the bra line for women), waist (smallest part of your abdominal area), abdomen (at the level of your navel), hips (the largest part at your hip bones), glutes (the widest part of your butt) and your thighs (largest area of each thigh).
You can also set aside an article of clothing you can put on but barely button and zip, like a pair of jeans. After five weeks of focused exercise training and good eating habits, try it on again.

Percentage of Body Fat

Your body fat can be easily measured at home with a hand-held device like the Omron Body Fat Analyzer. This tool measures the time it takes for a small, unnoticeable current to travel through your body. It is important to check your body fat first thing in the morning, after a night's fast from sleeping. Your food and water intake do affect the results. The American College of Sports Medicine advises consistency is key with your choice of measuring body fat percentage. Furthermore, reducing your body fat composition over the years is really how you win your war against body fat.

Muscular Endurance

Push-ups are a classic test to measure your muscular endurance. Using proper form for each repetition to count, you can do as many push-ups as possible until you are too tired to continue. The U.S. Army has its soldiers do the maximum number of push-ups they can do in two minutes. Whichever method you choose, make sure you do the same one for your next assessment. If you cannot do push-ups on your toes, do them on your knees! Make a note of it and as you get stronger, start to do the test on your toes.

Aerobic Endurance

You can measure your aerobic fitness on a treadmill, on a track or even in your neighborhood. Run one mile on a treadmill or a track and see how fast you can walk, walk/run or run that mile. Alternatively, pick a loop or path in your neighborhood and see how quickly you can cover that loop.