What do the Fitness Gram tests measure?

PHYSICAL FITNESS - Physical fitness is the state of well being where all parts of the body function properly and you have the ability to exercise without immediate fatigue.  *Your level of fitness depends on your age, sex, and body type. The average target heart rate for teenagers is 120-160 beats per minute. Click here to see some of the benefits of being fit.

THE PACER TEST - This running exercise is a time-measured and distance-measured way of assessing your cardio-respiratory endurance, which is the efficiency of your heart and respiratory system. The ability of the heart and lungs to supply oxygen to your muscles during continuous physical activity.  Each phase of the pacer test gets increasingly faster, making the rest periods shorter and shorter with every 9 laps.  The mile run is also another way of assessing cardio-respiratory endurance.

SIT AND REACH - This test measures your flexibility.  Flexibility is defined as the range of motion of joints and muscles.  By going through the full range of motion during the sit and reach, your back and hamstring muscles are being assessed.
Click here to learn how to stretch properly 

PUSH UPS - The time-paced push up test measures muscular strength, which is the maxium force muscles put out when they contract.  This can also be assessed by doing pull ups or the flexed arm hang.  Form / quality is more important than quantity. 

CURL UPS - This test measures muscular endurance, which is the ability of the muscle to sustain activity or continue to perform work. The muscle being worked here are the abdominal muscles.

BODY COMPOSITION - By taking your height and weight, we can determine a basic assessment of the percentage of body fat verse bone and muscle.  Two people who are the same height and same weight may look completely different from each other because they have different body compositions.  
The National Institute of Health recommends that a healthy adult male's body should have between 8 and 17% fat and a female should have 10-21%. Levels significantly above these amounts may indicate excess body fat.