A Guide to Tracking Your Fitness Progress
Understanding your fitness level isn't just about looking in the mirror or stepping on a scale. By tracking various aspects of your fitness, you can identify your strengths, pinpoint weaknesses, and create targeted improvement plans.
For the past two years, I've used a comprehensive testing protocol every six months to measure my fitness progress. Today, I'm sharing my approach to tracking five key areas: body composition, aerobic capacity, muscle strength, muscular endurance, and power.
Body Composition
Start with the basics: record your weight and take detailed measurements using a seamstress tape measure. Measure your arms, chest, abdomen, waist, thighs, and calves. These measurements help track concrete progress and identify potential imbalances, such as asymmetry between legs.
Aerobic Capacity
To assess cardiovascular fitness, focus on two metrics: heart rate recovery and VO2 max.
For heart rate recovery, sprint on a treadmill or assault bike to reach a near-maximum heart rate (calculated as 220 minus your age). Then, measure how quickly your heart rate drops during one and two minutes of complete rest. A healthy recovery shows your heart rate decreasing by roughly 30 beats per minute. Many fitness trackers can automate this measurement.
To estimate your body's oxygen utilization capacity (VO2 max), use the validated 12-minute Cooper run test. Simply cover as much distance as possible in 12 minutes. I prefer using a treadmill for precise distance tracking, which can be entered into a VO2 max calculator for analysis.
Muscle Strength
Muscle strength testing measures your maximum force production. I evaluate this through five major lifts:
Barbell back squat
Deadlift
Strict press
Bench press
Bent-over row
If you’re not experienced with weightlifting, please do not go into the gym and max out on all of these lifts! You’ll likely hurt yourself.
Even for experienced lifters, the benefits of performing a 1 rep max rarely outweigh the risks. Keeping this in mind, I typically perform each lift for a maximum of 2-5 repetitions and then plug them into a 1 rep max calculator to not risk injury.
Muscular Endurance
Muscular endurance tests the muscle's ability to repeatedly contract for a prolonged period.
Testing the maximum amount of pushups and pullups you can do is a good place to start for muscular endurance. And if you can’t do a pullup, you can use an assisted pull-up machine.
I also test my dead hang (how long I can hang from a bar) to check scapular and grip endurance. Traditional planks and side planks can also be useful to test your core’s muscular endurance.
Power
Power combines force and speed, measured through explosive movements.
For this aspect of fitness, I test three things: vertical jump, double leg broad jump, and single leg broad jump.
Vertical Jump: Mark your standing reach height on a wall, then measure how high you can jump and touch. The difference is your vertical jump height.
Broad Jump: From a starting line, jump horizontally as far as possible, measuring the distance from the start to the landing position.
Single-Leg Broad Jump: Perform the same test on each leg separately to identify lower body imbalances.
Making the Most of Your Assessment
Space these tests across several days to ensure fresh performance for accurate results. Once you have your baseline measurements, analyze the data to identify areas needing improvement.
Consider consulting a physical therapist to develop a targeted training plan based on your results.
Commit to reassessing every 6-12 months. Regular testing provides valuable insights into your progress and helps maintain motivation toward your fitness goals.
