Corporate Fitness and Active Aging

What is a fitness assessment and how can you benefit from it?

GettyImages-1299445663One of the best things you can do when it comes to tracking your progress with fitness is a fitness assessment. A fitness assessment is roughly a 30–60-minute consultation with a health and fitness professional where you are tested on the 5 components of fitness: body composition, muscular strength, muscular endurance, flexibility, and cardiovascular endurance. Some assessments may also test for balance, mobility, or more sports performance biased like power and agility. But for the sake of this article, we are focusing on the 5 components of fitness.

Generally, a health professional will want a client to go through an assessment before they start any form of a fitness program so they can best create a program that is going to work for them based on their goals and outcomes from the assessment. After the initial assessment it would be a good idea to reassess your progress 3-6 months later to see if you made any progress and how you can continue to improve. Fitness assessments are also scored and evaluated based on your age and gender. A health professional will sit down with you after your assessment and compare the results to normative data or age-adjusted charts to show where you should be based on data that has been researched to be accurate.

Why Are Fitness Assessments Important?

  • They serve as a baseline measurement that a personal trainer or health specialist can use to compare results over a period of time.
  • Serves as a source for a health specialist to build an exercise and/or nutrition program around.
  • Evaluates strength, endurance, cardiovascular health, flexibility, and body composition that may shed light on how you can best reduce the risk for injury.
  • Can increase motivation for a client to participate in an exercise program.
  • Build trust between a client and health specialist that can cultivate great relationships.

3 Ways You Can Benefit from a Fitness Assessment?

  1. Fitness Assessments Give You More Information Than a Scale.

One of the biggest benefits of a fitness assessment is they give you more information to use than your generic bathroom scale. This is not to say tracking your weight isn’t valuable, because it definitely has its place, but a fitness assessment will allow you to see how you perform from a physical perspective. There are more data points that show more change over time which could lead to longer involvement in a fitness program and healthy habits.

  1. The Assessment Will Help You Set Goals.

With the ability to dig deeper into learning more about your body via the assessment, you can create more specific goals that are going to beneficial for your overall health and longevity. This will allow you to have more intent with your fitness program, so you have something more specific to work towards.

  1. The Assessment Will Help Keep You Safe.

There are so many ways to program for different types of people. A fitness assessment allows a health fitness specialist find out what exercises they can incorporate and what exercises may not be best for an individual. The assessment will also uncover any underlying issues that could be made worse by engaging in a fitness program.

Before starting an exercise program, a fitness assessment can be really beneficial in measuring the 5 components of fitness: muscular strength, muscular endurance, cardiovascular health, flexibility, and body composition. The results from the assessment will also help a health fitness specialist design your individualized fitness program. Many benefits come from these assessments and can help uncover more about your body and how to keep it safe and live a healthier life. Now that you have more information on fitness assessments, reach out to your local fitness center staff and get your appointment scheduled!

See how NIFS can help your employees when staffing your onsite corporate fitness center! 

NIFS Corporate Fitness Services

Topics: body composition fitness assessment corporate fitness center wellness and fitness setting exercise goals tracking your fitness progress 23 Minutes

Tracking Your Fitness Progress - Is it Important?

NIFS | Writing | Tracking GoalsAs someone who exercises daily, I have fought myself on this topic. Why should I track my progress if I am feeling good about what I am doing? If I am working out every day, I will gradually see results and continue to climb that never-ending improvement ladder! Well, as it turns out, achieving goals more complicated than that.

Everyone hits a point in their exercise journey where they feel like they aren’t seeing results. In the beginning, your workouts are new and fresh! Heck, they might even be exciting! You are thinking about the endless possibilities and goals you're going to crush. Then the novelty starts to wear off around week three (at least, that is where I notice a downward trend). By the third week, you're starting to play a head game: “You’re tired. Why don’t you just take a rest today and just relax.? Its good to rest sometimes, right?” Then, it begins to snowball and eventually you notice you haven’t exercised in weeks. We have all been there.

And that's right where tracking your progress comes in. I will admit, at first I was skeptical. I thought, “I don’t need to do this. This is just an added ‘thing’ I have to do and I am already busy.”  Benefits of regularly tracking your fitness journey can include keeping your goals in sight and your accomplishments in perspective. It also helps you to become more mindful of why you are taking on regular exercise.

[Read more: Do you have a healthy relationship with exercise?]

When you have had a hard day at work, your kid(s) are screaming for attention or crying because you didn’t put their shoes in the right place, this is a great opportunity to go back and look at all the tracked progress you have made in your fitness goals – especially if you are planning on skipping out of your nightly or morning sweat session. Added stressors in our lives creep up on us and try to take over. If you haven’t laid out your goals or are not keeping a close eye on what you are trying to accomplish, then they could consume you and you may fall off the wagon.

I am not saying that tracking your goals will completely silence the “I need to quit” voice in your head. Other factors can (and sometimes will) lead to you needing to postpone your exercise routine temporarily. Fitness related injuries or family matters can require a pause. Those are outside influences we can’t control. If it happens to be you feeling like your exercise routine is just not for you anymore because you are tired and “over it,” make sure you look back and see all of the amazing progress you have made (which you can only do if you've been tracking your workouts), re-evaluate the situation, and continue to focus on your goals. Staying mindful and motivated by assessing your progress will help you realize that some of your goals have been met, and others are attainable. And of course, there's an app for that.

Like what you just read? Subscribe to our blog.

Topics: fitness tips fitness goals tracking your fitness progress