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Fitness

The 5 Second Fitness Test You Can Do At Home

The 5 Second Fitness Test You Can Do At Home

  • September 13, 2013 4:45 pm
  • 10 comments

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Author evilcyber visit my website

Doesn’t getting your personal level of health and fitness require tons of lengthy tests? Not if you just want to get a pretty good idea.

Your Fitness Tested In 5 Seconds

The last time I had my fitness and health measured, I had to visit my doctor before work to drop in a blood sample, and on another day do a stress ECG and get my aerobic capacity measured via a VO2 max test.

All this takes time, lots of time. Not to mention that visiting my doctor at 8 am in fasted state is not very high on my list of fun things to do.

To at least give you an idea where you are standing, a recent discovery by Swedish researchers can help. They found that your maximum step-up height is pretty closely related to a number of health factors: general fitness, aerobic capacity, waist circumference and body weight.

How To Test It

The Swedes built a €1,500 machine to measure this as accurately as possible, but you won’t need to. All you need to have is a solid object to step up on:

  • If you are male, you should be able to step up on an object at least 35 cm (13 1/3 inches) high
  • If you are a woman, it should be 32 cm (12 1/2 inches)
  • If you can’t manage at least 24 cm (9 1/2 inches) it’s time to do something about your health

This just screams to be tried out at home, so let me say it: do it safely. It’ll be detrimental to your health and fitness if you force yourself up on a 35 cm stool only to fall down.

Caveat Emptor, Of Course!

Also remember that this won’t replace a real examination, so don’t go postponing one because of this. Stepping up on a chair can’t measure your blood values or illnesses limiting your ability. That still takes seeing your doctor.

It also doesn’t really take your body height into account. My girlfriend is 4’11” and 32 cm are harder for her than for a woman of average height (5’4″).

How Did You Do?

That being said, she and I managed it with one of our kitchen chairs (45 cm), so I suppose we aren’t doing too badly. How did you do?

Picture courtesy of “le vent le cri“.

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Latest Comments

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10 Comments

  1. Greg Baumbach says:
    September 13, 2013 at 5:02 pm

    Um, I don’t consider myself to be an awesome physical shape by any means, but this seems like more a function of how long your legs are. Disclaimer, I’m a hockey goalie so my thighs are actually very well developed, so that’s probably skewing the test.

    I climb up on things like this all the time to work on changing bulbs or light fixtures. So, for grins, I did a kitchen chair (17″) and then a barstool (24″). Easy. Office desk is 27″…a little tougher, but doable. Beyond that, I can only raise my leg to about 28″, so 27″ is probably all I can do. Keep in mind I’m 70″ tall with a hip height of 36″. Not bad for a guy who is still tipping the scales at 200lbs, but at least it’s not 235lbs anymore. And perhaps not impressive given my height. I dunno.

    Reply
    • evilcyber says:
      September 13, 2013 at 5:04 pm

      It could also be that you lost weight, but managed to preserve most of your muscular strength. It took, after all, some quite strong legs to carry those extra 35 lbs.

      Reply
  2. Moon says:
    September 13, 2013 at 5:40 pm

    Did it say anything about step ups past 13″?

    Reply
    • evilcyber says:
      September 16, 2013 at 12:44 pm

      Yes: “wow, fit dude!” 🙂

      Reply
  3. Kim says:
    September 14, 2013 at 3:22 am

    I would try but I just sat down for the first time today – I’m pretty sure I can manage 32″!!!

    Reply
    • evilcyber says:
      September 16, 2013 at 12:44 pm

      And we are supposed to believe that? 😉

      Reply
  4. Jess says:
    September 14, 2013 at 1:06 pm

    What a cool little test!

    Reply
    • evilcyber says:
      September 16, 2013 at 12:44 pm

      I wage you managed it! 😉

      Reply
  5. victor says:
    September 14, 2013 at 9:40 pm

    i dont understand what do u need to do ?

    Reply
    • evilcyber says:
      September 16, 2013 at 12:45 pm

      Take a chair at least 35 cm high and see if you can step on it without swinging.

      Reply

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