Up To The Test
Women's Health & Fitness|September 2017

Testing your fitness is key to tracking progress and maximising results – and yet many of us don’t know how or when to get it done. From full-body scans to old school tape measures and stop watches, our experts reveal some of the fitness industry’s biggest secrets.

Katelyn Swallow
Up To The Test

Ever noticed how family and friends gush over weight lost, shape created or just your ‘healthy glow’ long before you notice the changes yourself? Changes to body composition are so subtle they will likely go unnoticed given how often we stare into the mirror, and your 10km run will somehow always feel exhausting, no matter your fitness improvements. This is where testing your fitness or body composition progress is key.

While it’s all well and good to chase gains, want to strip fat or simply ‘get fit’, none of these goals are easily achieved without a solid plan. And part of a solid plan – both to identify the effectiveness of diet or training tweaks and for your own motivation – is understanding your progress; you need to know from where you are coming and to where you want to go.

“We must force adaptations and the best way to do this is by knowing the data and using it accordingly,” says trainer and owner of Fully Loaded Fitness, Ethan Hyde (ethanhyde.com).

“If you’re not assessing, you’re guessing.”

Too often, both Hyde and head trainer and owner of Personally Trained Andrew McKee (personallytrained.com.au), see women obsessing over the scales – a notoriously unreliable method for testing muscle to fat ratios.

“Your fitness journey is more than just losing kilograms on the scales,” says McKee.

“It’s centimetres off the waist, chest, hips, arms and face. It’s changes in body fat percentage and percentage of muscle mass. It’s an increase in your ability to complete tasks such as running distances, completing daily tasks with ease and even competing in aspirational competitions such as a half marathon, triathlon or similar.

هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة September 2017 من Women's Health & Fitness.

ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.

هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة September 2017 من Women's Health & Fitness.

ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.

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