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Test For The Best Results: Use These Fitness Tests Now To Help You Track Your Progress · Your Strongest Body

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: You are listening to your strongest body.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Betsy Foster, a certified strength and conditioning specialist and certified nutrition coach.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: I've worked as a personal trainer for over a decade, helping people build strength, speed, muscles as well as a deep appreciation for their bodies and confidence that helps them live their life to the fullest.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Now I'm sharing what I know with you fitness, nutrition and all the deeper stuff to help you discover your strongest body.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: Hello, hello, welcome back to another episode of your Strongest Body.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: I'm happy you're here, as always.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: I'm happy you are hanging with me here.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: On the holiday schedule, some days I do have episodes coming out.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: I don't, but I posted about that.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: Over the next week and a half, we have some days where there are new episodes.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: This episode is coming out on December 20th.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: There are no episodes coming out the next week, but then I resume again on January 1st.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: That's a Monday, yeah, january 1st.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: Thank you for hanging in there.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: If you have extra time over the holidays and want to catch up on episodes you have missed, you can do that.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: You can slide through your Apple Podcasts or your Spotify and catch up, especially if there is a specific goal you have coming into the new year and you want to think about that.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: You can go through.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: I've got nutrition episodes.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: I've got workout episodes, things about specifically training body image those kinds of things you can look back and pick the episodes you want to listen to that are more tailored to your experience.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: This last episode of 2023 is going to be about testing Testing for the best results we know in all circumstances, or in most circumstances, whether it be in fitness or in other aspects of our life.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: We have a better time determining whether or not we have made progress if we have a marker of where we started, what gets tested.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: I think sometimes what gets tested gets done, or something like that is the phrase for fitness.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: This is really helpful because we are notoriously bad as human beings at being able to perceive the change that has happened, to be able to have a real understanding of what we have achieved, the progress we've made where we started.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: In a lot of ways, the nature of getting stronger or getting fitter is that things.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: If you're still working hard, if you are challenging yourself, then you're going to be doing more, but you don't remember what it was like when it felt harder earlier.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: If we test the things that we are trying to see change in at the beginning and recognize that that's just a point in time, a moment in time where we are in this given moment.
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: Then we can see how far we've progressed and we can tailor our training and we can determine whether our training is effective.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: What elements of our training do we need to manipulate if the progress isn't happening at a rate?
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: We want to see what kinds of things are we missing from our training or our nutrition to get us where we want to be.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: I'm going to talk about four different, pretty easy assessments.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: I'm going to talk about three fitness assessments and then I'm going to talk about one element of fitness nutrition.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: We'll talk a little bit about measurements at the very end.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: But if you embody measurements and body composition, I'm not leading with that, because what I want to lead with are three different kinds of fitness assessments so you can see whether you're progressing from a performance standpoint.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: Then I'm going to talk about those body composition measurements because for some people that is a really big part of their fitness goal and I don't want to neglect it.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: But I want to give you these assessments first, in case your fitness goals aren't oriented toward aesthetics or changing the way your body looks.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: These are.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: There are lots.
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: There's a litany of different kinds of fitness assessments that exist.
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: If you wanted to be a high level athlete, an elite performer, if you had a specific sport you were playing, you might pick a few more assessments or a few more highly technical assessments, comparisons with less of a margin for error, so that you could really tell where you have improved Sports performance.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: Labs have lots of different kinds of tests.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: The three that I'm going to mention today are simple for the average fitness folk to do on their own.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: You can set the circumstances to be replicable, for you to be able to do this test multiple times and see the change.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: That's what we want from our fitness assessment is the ability to create the same circumstances a second time and see what has changed.
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: These are low equipment, need simple tests.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: We're going to start with muscular endurance.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: Muscular endurance is your body's ability to musclarly contract repeatedly without fatiguing.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: If you think about endurance sports or you think about areas of fitness where you want to be able to continuously do things for a long period of time, you want some muscular endurance.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: We all want some of it.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: You just might need a little less, depending on what you're working on.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: Muscular endurance can be useful for everybody, though.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: So a good way to assess muscular endurance is simply to do as many reps of a bodyweight exercise to failure.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: Typically, the sit-up test that had been used as sort of the muscular endurance test or a push-up test.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: That's an upper body muscular endurance test, so you probably want an upper body and a lower body muscular endurance test, either a bodyweight squat or a push-up test.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: You would just do those exercises bodyweight until you couldn't do it anymore.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: You're trying to kind of go as quickly as you can for as long as you can and see how many reps you can get.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: That's all you have to do for that assessment.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: You literally start and just do as many as you can until you can't do anymore, and again, you're trying to do them quickly.
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: Realize that if you are a person who does not have their first full range of motion, push-up or push-ups are very difficult for you.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: You may want to elevate your push-up, or you might want to have a box to aim your squat to so you can sort of manage the depth of your squat.
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: If that's something that you're working on, just remember that, no matter how you test initially, you need to make that exactly the same when you retest.
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: So if you're doing an elevated push-up to a bench, just realize that when you retest in, say, three to six months or 12 weeks, you are going to do it in that same setup.
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: So muscular endurance, that would be one test I would do.
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: That's going to take very little time.
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: You're going to fatigue, I imagine, faster than you think.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: Aerobic fitness, so our ability to use our aerobic system, so we're using oxygen.
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: This has to do with cardiovascular fitness, an aerobic test.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: Typically what is suggested is a 12-minute walk or run test.
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: So you set a timer for 12 minutes, you go as fast as you can and that's either running or walking and you try to assess how far you go.
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: That is, again, easily repeatable.
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: There are tests to measure aerobic fitness that are more exact, but the 12-minute test is one that everybody can easily do and you can see the change over time.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: So you would simply pick a route.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: Maybe you would go to a track so that you could just circle the track and not have to worry.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: You don't want to have to worry about traffic, you don't want to have to worry about hills, you want to find sort of a flat ground.
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: You could do it on a treadmill, but then you're messing with the buttons and sort of changing the pace, whereas if you're just doing it outside you're going to have better results.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: But again, you want to make this something that you can repeat later.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: So 12 minutes, that's the aerobic fitness test, again simple to do and just a nice barometer for have I improved?
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: And you may not improve in all of these areas at the same speed and at the same time, but you could kind of always recreate all of these three assessments and get some information.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: The last one of the fitness assessments that I'm going to mention is a strength assessment.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: So typically with strength, we measure strength by our one rep max, meaning what is the head heaviest thing we can do with a weight for one rep deadlift, squat, bench press, overhead press you would get to your one rep max.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: But we do not test our one rep max because that is a very precarious situation when you are getting to the weight that you could actually do for only one time.
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: You need spotters, you need to have been training for it.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: So typically we're looking to get to around three to five reps, even three to six reps on our assessment for strength.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: So what you're aiming to do is get to around three to six the maximum, the maximum weight you can move for about three to six reps.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: If you are already trained in squats and deadlifts and bench press and overhead press and pull-ups or whatever that may be, and you feel comfortable and confident with the form, you are ready, then you could do that assessment, again only going to around three to six reps, and you would slowly work up from a warm-up weight and then add weight and add weight and when you can't add weight anymore you have a basic assessment of how many you could do for three to six reps.
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: Then we typically use that in a calculator and we can tell.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: We give you a sort of suggested or predicted one rep max number.
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: Then when you assess again, you again get to that three to five and you can see how much it has improved.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: If you are not trained in those movements, we can use machines to do that same kind of assessment.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: So you could use a leg press.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: A leg press takes out a lot of the elements of form and core stability and core strength needed and you can sit there and you can press the heaviest weight you can for three to five reps Most likely.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: If you do that well and you warm up a little bit before again, you can do that very safely.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: Same thing with, like a chest press machine you would warm up a little bit, you would work up to it and then you would press the weight.
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: That you can only do for three to five reps.
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: That would give us some indication of where you are and then you would repeat that later after your training.
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: And maybe in your training you're not always doing leg press, you're doing lots of different exercises.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: You can use the leg press again to assess that.
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: So you can do a strength assessment.
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: You probably want to take, like what you would take as your whole workout one day run through the big movements, whether or not you're doing that with barbells or dumbbells or whether you're doing some sort of machine-based variation, and then you can see where you are and how to progress.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: So, as I said, we're talking about a muscular endurance assessment how many reps of a body weight exercise and you do quickly until failure, your aerobic test.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: So that's that 12 minute walk or run test and then the strength going to three to five, maybe three to six rep max and then being able to determine your max effort from there.
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: That'll just give you a good picture of your overall fitness and then you can measure again later.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: You'll probably want to lean into one or more of those if your goal is increasing your deadlift.
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: If your goal is increasing your deadlift, you definitely want to know what your deadlift like, projected max is.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: If you are trying to run a marathon, you might want that aerobic test and that muscular endurance test.
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: You probably want them all for a good picture, but you're going to focus on the ones that are specific to your goal.
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: That leads me to the aesthetic measurements that if your goal is changing how your body looks, then you will probably want to do some pictures.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: If your goal is changing your body composition, so that's decreasing body fat and increasing muscle or increasing body fat and decreasing muscle, whichever you would be choosing to do, you would want to measure it.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: Most people who are looking to change their physique are usually looking toward losing body fat or gaining muscle, or both.
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: A body composition test would do that.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: They sell scales that do some measure of that.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: They're not terrifically accurate An in-body, so an electrical impedance assessment could do that.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: They sell those for home use or you can typically find them at a gym.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: If you talk to someone at the gym, they either probably offer a paid thing or they do it complimentary through their personal training program.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: You could see that, or you can use a more sophisticated test that are usually available for purchase at a university or a sports performance center.
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: I live near the University of Florida and so I did my measurements within their sports performance program in the BOD pod, which uses the air displacement method gas displacement method to determine your body fat percentage and your lean mass.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: That gave me the information that I wanted.
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: If your goal is to lose weight, you could use the scale.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: If that is the most important thing to you and you want that number to go down, you would use the scale as an assessment.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: What I will warn against with that is that a lot of times, if the idea is changing the way your body looks, sometimes the scale is not going to help with that.
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: What I'll say and I'll make a note here if you don't like talk of body fat and numbers or I won't do numbers, but if you don't like that, you can just skip this, or you can end the episode, or you can cover your ears, because I'm going to talk about it for two minutes.
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: What I'll say is my body has changed in appearance a lot in the last year and a half and my weight increased on the scale.
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: Now my weight increased on the scale by very little, but there's still an increase.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: If I were fixated on that number then I would be, I would be sort of overwhelmed by that because I would be thinking about weight loss as the only indicator.
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: Now my body had changed a lot aesthetically because I lost a percentage of body fat and I increased my muscle mass by a large percentage.
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: So my body aesthetic looked very different.
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: My scale didn't move much, but it moved and it moved in a direction up Again.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: All that to say not good, not bad, not an indicator of worth or an indicator of success or an indicator of fitness, but merely to say that if the information, if the goal for you is a different look about your body the scale may not be the indicator you're thinking of.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: So if you want a little bit more information about muscle mass and body fat and any of that, let me know.
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: I kind of want to determine whether or not that's something that people want to hear on this podcast, or if you just want to talk about it individually, I'm happy to answer your questions, and I'm happy to answer your questions about getting those kinds of assessment if that is relevant to your goals.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: Now, if that is not relevant to you, you do not think it's important and it does not connect to your goals, then you don't need to do it.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: Again, you don't need to do it.
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: You choose what is relevant to your goals and to your fitness, nutrition and body accomplishments, whatever that might be, and then use the assessments that are going to help you measure the progress toward that goal.
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: Remember, your goals are the only things that are important for you.
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: Other people can be focused on other things.
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: Focus on what is important to you and you are not obligated to make any goal your goal because other people are doing it.
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: So just a reminder of that.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: So those are the kinds of assessments that you can do at particularly at this time of year is nice because you're fresh.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: If you want to fresh, start in January, but you could do it in January if that works for you, and then do it again in December, do it in January, do it every quarter, whatever works best for you.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: All right, that'll be all I'm gonna cover today.
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: If you have questions about these assessments, if you have questions about just your fitness goals in general, things you wanna hear on the podcast in 2024, let me know.
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: You can always reach me via email, betsy, at the letter, bfosterstrongcom so that's Bfosterstrongcom.
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: Or you can send me an Instagram DM at foster underscore strength.
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: It is a great time of the year to reflect and be thankful for all the things that we have in our lives and I am so thankful for you, thankful to each and every person that listens to one or all episodes.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: I hope that I can be a source of help and support as you truly, truly, truly get to experience your strongest, most fulfilled body in 2024.
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: Thank you, as always, and I'll see you or be talking to you next year.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: Bye, bye.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: Glad to see you.