How Fit are You?
Find out with these simple, age-adjusted tests of cardiovascular fitness, strength, flexibility, and balance.
Life is better when experienced through a fit body, plain and simple. A fit body feels great, looks great, and grants you access to great experiences.
But how fit is fit enough?
On the one hand, poor fitness is a genuine health hazard, linked to every scary degenerative disease out there (heart disease, cancer, diabetes, dementia). Even so, a shocking 75% of Americans fall into this risk group.
But fitness can also be taken too far, consuming excessive time and energy, and risking injury. Like most of life, exercise adheres to the law of diminishing returns: Beyond a certain point, the amount of effort you need to put in for the next bit of progress is no longer worth it.
This article presents some simple tests you can easily do at home to check whether you fall in the golden window between these two extremes.
Reading the Graphs
Each of the six graphs below presents lines for “Excellent” and “Average” fitness levels for men and women of different ages.
For good health and general life satisfaction, you should exceed the “Average” line. Each…
