Fitness Testing

I know I have written before about the resistance training John and I are doing is from a guy named Mark Lauren and his book "You are Your Own Gym".  On Sparkpeople today I blogged about trying to track my progress with some fitness testing they recommend and I thought since I really don't have much to talk about otherwise I'd share what I wrote in that blog, so here it is.


After about 10 weeks on Mark Lauren's basic program, I knew I could not pass the test to move on to the First Class program so I was looking for a way to measure my progress other than just his test. I know I have gained strength but his programs are very challenging and it may take awhile yet before I move up. So in looking around Sparkpeople I found the fitness testing article and decided to do the fitness tests and use them to chart my progress. So today I did the 1 mile walk test, pushup test and crunch test. I don't have a very good way to do the step up test so for me my aerobic fitness will be tracked with the 1 mile walk. 

So how did I do? Pretty well overall. I did 24 modified pushups in 1 min., which puts me in the good category for my age and 23 crunches in 1 min. putting me in the good category there. Where I shined though was the one mile walk. I have been power walking for awhile now so I nailed this in 12min 17 sec. That put me in the excellent category not only for my age range but even for the 20-29 y/o age range. Pretty cool. Without jogging I'm not sure how much faster I can do that but next time I may try running and power walking for 1 mile to see how I do. I definitely have room for improvement in my strength training but I am glad I now have a baseline and a goal to shoot for. I am going to try and take those tests again when I finish the last week of undulating blocks again, which will put my testing at about a month. I really do believe that if I keep working I will make it into that next level in Mark Lauren's program. 

My workout philosophy has always been "slow and steady wins the race". Persistence will win out!

Comments

  1. owensontheroadMay 25, 2012 at 7:37 AM

    Good for you! I must admit, I used to be very active and exercise every day. Wii Fit at a minimum, with walking and bike riding too. These days, it's hard with coming home stressed out, all I want to do is sit. I need to get off my butt and will do so when things settle down in the future :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Mike & TerryMay 27, 2012 at 9:25 AM

    I have to look into these websites. Very interesting. And good job, by the way!!

    ReplyDelete

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