Introduction
According to Bharat Bhise, it is essential to gauge your current fitness levels for tracking the progress of your fitness improvement goals. Plus, it would allow you to be aware of any health problems. For gauging your fitness, you will require a few tools such as a scale, stopwatch, measuring tape, yardstick, and other such tools.
The Steps
Here are a few steps you can follow to gauge your fitness:
1. Aerobic fitness test – The resting heart rate is a good indicator of heart health. To measure your heart rate, you can place two fingers over your radial artery just below the thumb. Generally, a heart rate of 60 to 80 beats a minute is average for most adults.
To test your aerobic fitness level, you can do a running or jogging test. To put it simply, you just have to run or jog 2.4 km or 1.5 miles and measure the time it takes you to complete the route. Men should be able to complete the run in under 11-12 minutes while women should take about 13-14 minutes.
2. Flexibility test – The easiest way to measure your flexibility is to perform the sit-and-reach test. It helps to measure the flexibility of your lower back, hips, and the back of your legs. To perform the test, you have to secure a yardstick on the floor with tape at the 15-inch mark.
Next, place the soles of your feet on the marked spot and slowly reach as far forward as you can. Remember to exhale while reaching and pause for at least 1 second. Mark the distance reached and perform the test 2 more times.
Generally, a reach between 19.5 inches to 17.5 inches means good flexibility for men and 21.5 inches to 20 inches indicate good flexibility for women.
3. Muscular strength and endurance test – There are many exercises you can perform to measure your muscular strength and an endurance test, but pushups and sit-ups serve as the standard test. For men, 20-30 pushups are considered good. For women, 18-25 push-ups are considered good.
Generally, 30-40 sit-ups are considered good for men, and 25-35 sit-ups are considered good for women.
4. Body composition – Measuring your body mass index (BMI) will help you to understand whether your body fat levels are healthy. You can easily measure your BMI using an online BMI calculator. A BMI of 18.5 to 24.9 is considered normal, below 18.5 is considered underweight, 25 to 29.9 is considered overweight, and above that is considered obese.
You should also measure your waist circumference to learn more about your body composition. For instance, people who have a waist circumference that is greater than their hips are not fit.
Conclusion
Bharat Bhise suggests you do strength training for all the major muscle groups at least twice a week to build your strength and stay fit. It is also recommended you do 75 minutes of vigorous aerobic activity, 150 minutes of moderate activity, or some combination of the two every week to boost your fitness levels.