- A physical therapy professor developed a fitness test for competitive senior athletes.
- The Sustained Athlete Fitness Exam has muscular, cardiovascular, flexibility and balance tests.
- The Washington Post requested a simple version of the test people can take at home.
A University of South Dakota physical therapy professor developed a new fitness test for older athletes because she thought existing ones were too easy.
Becca Jordre, a professor in the School of Health Sciences, dubbed it the Sustained Athlete Fitness Exam or SAFE. It tests cardiovascular and muscular fitness, flexibility and balance.
Jordre put the test to the test, so to speak, in a recent study of 4,659 masters athletes competing in the National Senior Games, a biennial event featuring 22 sports for athletes 50 years old and up.
Most participants’ strength and aerobic conditioning were high and they were in good overall health. Their health histories revealed low rates of chronic conditions such as heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes or cancer, with 28.5% reporting none.
The full SAFE includes more than a dozen tests and awards points for passing each, with 20 being a perfect score. Only 1% of the National Senior Games athletes tested have earned a 20. The group average was about 13, according to The Washington Post.
About a decade ago, Jordre and others, including study co-author Wendy Viviers, began assessing the fitness of those senior athletes, per the Post. They originally planned to use the measurements to alert them to possible weaknesses. But Jordre said the athletes aced the physical capability tests that were designed for relatively sedentary older people.
So the researchers pooled the data from nearly 4,700 athletes they had tested to come up with new standards.
How you can test your fitness
Although the test is for competitive athletes, others can try it, too. But because the full SAFE is long and complicated, the Post asked Jordre and her colleagues to choose the two most effective and simplest measurements and calculate benchmarks for athletes and nonathletes.
The two tests are the Five Times Sit to Stand and Maximal Walking Speed checks. Jordre said they require “dynamic movement and speed,” so they provide a sense of someone’s overall strength, power and coordination.
“Completing these at-home self-checks should give you a sense of how fit you are today and whether you really could hang with the elite 80-year-olds,” per the Post.
Five Times Sit to Stand
Position a chair, preferably without armrests, against a wall so it won’t move. Sit at the chair’s edge. Then, without using your hands, rise completely upright and sit back down five times as rapidly as you can, while someone times you.
A good sit-to-stand time for a 50-year-old athlete is about 6 seconds; for an 80-year-old athlete, 8 seconds.
Maximal Walking Speed
Measure out a 10-meter course in a hallway or wherever you have space. Ten meters is 10.9 yards or 32.8 feet. Start about 10 feet back from this walkway to get up to speed. Then walk as quickly as possible along the course while someone times you. Don’t run; one of your feet should always be on the ground. Divide the distance (10) by the number of seconds to get your speed in meters per second.
A typical max walking speed for an athlete in his or her early 50s is about 2.3 meters per second or faster. For an 80-year-old athlete, it’s about 2 meters per second.