Key Metrics for Physical Fitness
One of the areas that many people (including myself) have on their personal development list is to “increase physical fitness”, aka “get into shape” or “lose the spare tire”. We all know in general what it means to be in shape, but if you are truly interested in tracking your progress, you need some metrics to track.
First off, what is physical fitness? The President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports breaks it down into five components:
Cardiorespiratory Endurance - the ability to deliver oxygen and nutrients to tissues, and to remove wastes, over sustained periods of time. Long runs and swims are among the methods employed in measuring this component.
Muscular Strength - the ability of a muscle to exert force for a brief period of time. Upper-body strength, for example, can be measured by various weight-lifting exercises.
Muscular Endurance - the ability of a muscle, or a group of muscles, to sustain repeated contractions or to continue applying force against a fixed object. Pushups are often used to test endurance of arm and shoulder muscles.
Flexibility - the ability to move joints and use muscles through their full range of motion. The sit-and- reach test is a good measure of flexibility of the lower back and backs of the upper legs.
Body Composition is often considered a component of fitness. It refers to the makeup of the body in terms of lean mass (muscle, bone, vital tissue and organs) and fat mass. An optimal ratio of fat to lean mass is an indication of fitness, and the right types of exercises will help you decrease body fat and increase or maintain muscle mass.
Although there are many different metrics associated with the above components of physical fitness, the following are the more common ones. If you want to take a fun quiz to find out how you currently stack up, check out Outside magazine’s fitness quiz.
- Cardiorespiratory Endurance
- Maximum / Target Heart Rate. Your target heat rate is how fast your heart needs to beat during exercise for it to count. This is normally calculated as a percentage of your maximum heart rate (important not to confuse these!). There are a lot of online calculators out there to determine yours.
- Resting Heart Rate. This is another method to calculate your target heart rate. Your resting heart rate is normally measured just before you get out of bed. So if you want to sleep in when your kids wake up early, just tell your spouse you’ll be measuring your heart rate for the next hour or so. I’m sure they’ll be happy to get up and let you work on your physical fitness goal. (Good luck with that).
- VO2 max. This is a measurement of how well your body processes oxygen during long periods of exercise. This metric can be increased over time, although how much you can change it is dependent upon your own body. Here is one method to estimate it.
- 5K speed. How fast you can run 5 kilometers is a good metric if you are into running. Or if you are more advanced, your speed on a 10K or even a marathon can become a personal metric to beat the next time. You can substitute other metrics here if you are into bicycling, swimming, or something similar. Anything that requires endurance works.
- Muscular Strength
- Repetitions. This is a key metric when building strength, and refers to how many times you apply resistance to your muscles (e.g. lift a weight) before you let them rest.
- Sets. Normally you do a certain number of repetitions, then let your muscles rest before repeating the cycle again. Each time you repeat this cycle is referred to as a set.
- Resistance. Depending upon how you are building strength, this could be the amount of weight you are lifting, or the resistance applied by a elastic band. Depending upon your fitness goal (e.g. building big muscles, staying toned, or losing weight), you will vary whether you do a lot of repetitions or use heavy resistance.
- Muscular Endurance
- Number of pushups / pullups. How many can you do in a row?
- Flexibility
- Touching your toes. OK, OK, I struggled to find good metrics on flexibility - this is about the only one I can find. Maybe your ability to perform specific yoga poses? Not sure. You need to find your own personal metric for this one - leave me a comment below if you know of some.
- Body Composition
- Body Mass Index. This is a popular measure for determining your overall health, based on how much of your body is fat. Here is a good calculator for it.
- Ideal Weight. This is a good target for a healthy weight, based on your age, gender and height.
Now that you know the key metrics, the next step is to identify a fitness plan and get started. I plan to evaluate different methods in the future, and will post about it. In the meantime, here is a good site with a lot of information on exercise and fitness.