Created in 2008, the adult fitness test is meant to test the aerobic fitness and muscular strength and endurance of the men and women of the United States. It is pretty basic in its testing criteria and easy enough that anyone can do it at home. You could even make it a competition between you and your friends to further motivate yourself to try harder.

The program says it is for people aged 18 and older who are in good health and it also provides a prescreening questionnaire to help you assess whether or not you may be ready to take the test. Unless you have stress induced or other severe health related problems you should be able to complete the test parameters without any problem.

If you have never taken any kind of fitness test and have never really had a fitness regimen then this may be a good starting block for you. It will measure all the basics including:

• Aerobic fitness
• Muscular strength and endurance
• Flexibility
• Body Composition (though we know BMI is nonsense)

Once you complete the statistics you can keep your results and use them as a base from which you can improve. Tracking your progress and actually being able to see the numbers improve is one of the biggest motivating forces out there. It is tangible change and keeps you on track towards attaining your goal.

So, check out the program and let me know it went. If you have any questions just drop me a line in the comment box.

http://www.adultfitnesstest.org/

Dynamic warm ups are not exactly new, but they have yet to go mainstream. What are they? Well its warming up your body by stretching through movement. Examples of this are lunges, side bends, high knees, back pedals, scorpions, side stepping, high knee skipping, Frankenstein walk and MORE! Descriptions will follow.

So what is the deal with old school static stretching. Well get on pubmed @ ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed/ and if you do a little research you will find numerous studies, all new that are all showing the same finding. That is, static stretching before an athletic event notably impairs the capability of our muscles to produce peak force output. It has been studied in specific sports, runners cannot sprint as fast, basketball players can’t jump as high, rugby players can’t push as hard, when they do a static stretching routine before these events.

Why? Well static stretching does not raise your core temperature at all, so your body is not becoming any more ready to go into full drive. You are stretching your muscles past their normal flexibility and this decreases the force capability of the contraction thereafter. In some cases, hyper extension injuries were shown to be occur more frequently when an athlete followed a static stretching regimen prior to an event. Now hear me out, I am not saying static stretching is bad! It just should not be done prior to a performance but rather after as a part of a cool down.

Dynamic warm ups get our bodies ready to do what we need them to. They increase our range of motion dramatically, warm up our bodies significantly, stretch all core muscles including the legs, trunk and upper body and can be made to be sport specific.

Another benefit is a dynamic flexibility regimen can be done significantly faster than a traditional 10-15 minute static stretching routine. This is how

Pick 6-8 of any of the following exercises:

• lunge
• side bend
• frankenstein walk
• high knees
• jumping jacks
• back pedaling
• scorpion
• high knee skipping
• side lunges

Then find yourself 15-20 yards of space. One way do one of the previous exercises and on the way back jog, then repeat with the next exercise until you have done all the ones you chose for your routine. Do this three times and that is your warm up. Simple huh? Yeah I thought so to. Take a short 30 second rest between each set of 6-8 exercises. But other than that it is pretty straightforward. Now for a description of the above mentioned exercises.

Lunge - Step forward with one leg keeping your upper body straight and diving your knee into the ground. There should be about 2 and a half feet between your feet and you should feel the burn in your hamstrings and quads.

Side Bend – Bend at the waist from one side to the other keeping your torso straight and using only your obliques to pull you up. Best when done with an exercise ball for added mobility.

Frankenstein Walk - Just as they sound, put your arms straight out and kick your toes up to your hands as far as you can trying not to bend at the knee. This gets your hip more flexible and works your legs at the same time.

High Knees – While trying to run kick your heels up to your butt or around your waistline if you can while pumping the opposite arm. Great mobility enhancer for all the joints in your lower body. These are not about distance so do not try and cover the 15-20 yards quickly.

Jumping Jacks – Ah how we all love this arcane exercise. Try some variation to keep things new by having your arms in front of you instead of above or crossing your legs instead of just spreading them. Anything you can think of.

Back Pedaling – Run backwards making sure you are not dragging your heels or toes on the ground. Great for your calves and the muscle that wraps in front of your shins.

Scorpion – Lie face down on the ground with arms extended to your sides, palms facing down, so your body forms a mock T shape. Keeping this facedown position and keeping your shoulders flat on the ground, bring your left heel and swing it back towards your right hand. Repeat for the other leg.

High Knee Skipping – Just as we did when we were little go and skip! Only difference is with each skip try and bring your knee up as high as you can exploding of your toes with each skip.

Side Lunges - Get in a low athletic position, like a wide squat almost. Step to the side with one leg maintaining the same athletic position and not getting any taller. Much like I envision a ninja looks like. Yes you are the NINJA! Now step together with the other leg. Switch sides and repeat for the distance. These mega burn the glute and quads!

And there you have it, a dynamic flexibility warm up to get you ready for anything you might need to do. Want a sport specific routine? Drop a line in the comments.

There are two types of muscle fibers, fast-twitch and slow-twitch or TypeII and TypeI. Within the TypeII class there are fast-oxidative-glycolytic TypeIIa and fast-glycolytic TypeIIb fibers. Contrary to what some people believe, both exert the same amount of force, it is simply the rate at which they do so that varies.

TypeIIb fibers, as their name implies, are primarily anaerobic by nature possessing larger stores of glycogen and the enzymes necessary for anaerobic respiration, meaning they operate without oxygen. Adding to their architecture they have few mitochondria, the primary structure that is utilized for aerobic respiration. TypeIIa fibers on the other hand possess the enzymes necessary for anaerobic respiration and glycogen stores, along with oxidative enzymes and more mitochondria. Think of them as a hybrid fast-twitch slow-twitch fiber that can still exert maximum force as fast as the fast-glycolytic fibers. This characteristic of the TypeIIa fibers means they will out endure their TypeIIb counterpart.

Sprinters rely on these fast-twitch muscles to explode with every foot strike, batters to engage their shoulders and forearms instantaneously and basketball players to explode with their quadriceps calves and hamstrings into the air for a rebound or to slam it. So what is the deal with slow-twitch fibers.

Slow-twitch or TypeI fibers are what keep a marathon runner going, or a triathlete on his feet. They sacrifice contractile speed for long term endurance by having a complex network of capillaries and vast quantities of mitochondria within their structure to facilitate aerobic respiration, which will always out endure the utilization of glycogen stores which deplete quickly (more on glycogen utilization later). The capillaries that entangle these fibers ensure a steady supply of nutrients to the mitochondria, the same way a steady flow of fuel will keep your vehicle going. Which type of muscle fiber do I want then? Well unfortunately you do not have much say in the matter.

Your genetics determines your muscle fiber composition for the most part. It has been shown though that after years of training, and yes I do mean years, TypeIIb fibers can transition to TypeIIa fibers. Actually biopsies of some elite athletes show that after many years of training, they possess almost no TypeIIb fibers, meaning there is hope for creating a more elite YOU. Dedication to your training regimen is what is going to decide how successful this recruitment is. Stick to the explosive movements, your clean press, power cleans, jump squats and high pulls. Or on your normal exercises such as bench, uses intervals like 3-2-1. What this means is that when you are bringing the weight down to your chest take three seconds, so slow controlled movement, then hold for two seconds and explode up. There will be a detailed article on Explosive Strength regimens here soon.

Still confused? Think of it this way, birds legs, take a thigh for example are darker slow twitch fibers. They stand around and walk all day so they need these muscles to last. Their wings, are white meat, fast-twitch, ready to get them airborne if farmer john comes around looking for dinner. With a proper routine, you too can train to be explosive, increasing your overall athleticism dramatically. Jumping higher, running faster, and being able to be quicker in all movements just gives you an edge that pure bulk does not. So examine your routine, mix it up every so often and train to be explosive. Plyometrics are a great way to train explosive movements, refer to the playlist here for great plyometric exercises.

Until next time.

For our purposes, fitness is the epitome of health. Now this might seem bizarre or incorrect, but a properly executed fitness regimen will provide excellent health benefits. Merely exercising and dieting by no means produce fitness though. For example, someone who runs everyday but is on a high carbohydrate, low fat and medium protein intake  diet is at risk of developing atherosclerotic disease, among a slew of other things. Fitness then is a compound measurement of many key areas.

Being fit should be understood as a function of the following:

• triglyceride levels
• body fat
• muscle mass
• flexibility, blood pressure
• cholesterol levels
• lung capacity
• bone density
• mental health

Thus, one’s fitness level is a combined measurement that represents total body health, not merely an expression of athletic ability. Physical competence incorporates other skills and areas which may associate more closely with most people’s general understanding of  what fitness is but physical competence does not correlate with being in an overall state of physical fitness.

Closing this out, it is key to realize that if one strives for and achieves increasingly healthy and fit levels of all of the previously mentioned 8 areas of fitness, then one’s body chemistry will indeed change. This change precipitates a healthier, less disease prone life. It is for this reason that we strive to achieve high levels of fitness.

Future posts will focus specifically on each of these 8 areas and how to approach each in a total fitness regimen.