Fitness tests for aerobic fitness - For Polar M-Series & S-Series Monitors 

There are numerous fitness tests for aerobic fitness in the world ranging from sophisticated laboratory tests (as shown above), to simple field tests. They are all designed to measure or predict oxygen uptake (maximal aerobic power, VO_2max). Most of the predictive tests target to estimate the oxygen uptake of the body via heart rate and/or workload. Depending on how hard the body is exhausted during the tests, they can be divided into two categories: maximal tests and submaximal tests.

The most common submaximal test procedures used for testing cardiovascular fitness are:
1. Cycle tests (Åstrand test, WHO cycle test, PWC170 test)
2. Step tests (Harvard step test, Queens College step test)
3. Walking tests (UKK Walk test, Rockport Walk test)

 Maximal tests have been designed for the needs of professional athletes rather than for those of non-competitive exercisers. Very seldom a normal, active man or woman has the possibility to costly and exhaustive laboratory tests.

Still, many of them are interested in their fitness. What is my fitness level? Do I need to start exercising? How to follow my improvement best? Can I see the improvement with my heart rate monitor?

Polar Fitness Test™ is a breakthrough in the world of aerobic fitness testing. It is developed to measure cardiovascular fitness based on the changes in your resting heart's beating, heart rate variability. Polar Fitness Test™ helps people to get information about their physical condition easily. They can now test fitness all by themselves, fully automatically and best of all, safely, without any exhaustion in less than five minutes.

Test procedure

The components of the Polar Fitness Test™ are gender, age, height, and body weight of the person, the level of physical activity and heart rate as well as heart rate variability measured at rest. Once the first five items are given, the test can start. The duration is at maximum 5 minutes and the progress is displayed graphically. The person who is testing herself/himself should be at rest in a laying or sitting position. Any disturbances, such as talking during the test or surrounding noises, should be avoided.

Test equipment

The Polar Fitness Test™ is operated with the Polar M-series and S-Series heart rate monitors models. ( See Polar Comparison Chart ) No other equipment such as treadmill is needed. No special facilities or testing personnel is needed either. Anyone can do the test by himself/herself or let the trainer or exercise physiologist to do it. The test can take place anywhere from home to office or to health club as long as the environment is peaceful. However, for maximal consistency and reliability it is recommended to keep the testing place, time, body position and testing environment the same every time when the test is repeated.

In every fitness test, you need to know what the given result means to benefit from it. In Polar Fitness Test™ the person gets a score, Polar OwnIndex™, which is comparable to VO_2max, a commonly used descriptor of aerobic fitness. Therefore the range for the Polar Fitness Index™ is the same as that for VO_2max, from 25, which can be measured for unfit sedentary individual, to 95, which is the level reached by Olympic athletes, such as top cross-country skiers. Fitness tests are most useful when following individual progress by comparing new results to previous ones.

National norms can be used to compare the test results to the average values of those with the same age and gender. For this comparison up-to-date results measured in a large sample of a representative population are needed. Below is one example of normal values presented as a mean and standard deviation values according to the age group (Fletcher et al. 1995).

Individual OwnIndex™ can be compared to the population norms as follows: One standard deviation around the mean (half of SD up and half down) represents "average fitness". E.g. for a 33-year-old woman index between 31-37 (34-3 and 34+3) represents "average fitness" compared to other women of the same age. An index less than 31 is below the average and an index more than 37 is above the average.

Polar Fitness Test™ is an exceptional test because it measures your body's response in rest. This is unique since there is only one other aerobic fitness test, so called Non-Exercise Fitness Test (Jackson et al. 1990), which does not require exercise performance for fitness assessment. This test is incorporating physical activity and body mass index, BMI. The safety of the Polar Fitness Test™ can be fully guaranteed, which broadens the possibilities of using this test to persons who have previously been out of the reach of fitness testing due to health risks in exhaustion, for example the elderly and those with musculoskeletal disorders.

Not all individuals feel comfortable being measured by someone else or being compared with others. Polar Fitness Test™ can be conducted privately without participation into e.g. mass testing. Some people with low fitness level may be embarrassed about their poor physical condition and prior to starting an organized exercise program that includes testing in the beginning, prefer to wait for weeks before joining in, just to avoid the humiliation. People should not be humiliated by test results of poor physical condition.

Monitoring the progress

It takes a minimum of 6 weeks on an average to see a demonstrable change in cardiovascular fitness. Less fit individuals see progress even more rapidly and for more active individuals more time is needed. The purpose of Polar Fitness Test™ is the same as for all fitness tests, to monitor this progress. For less active people it's a good idea to enter the more active world of health and fitness with the Polar Fitness Test™. For more active people, who have never been tested and who aren't really aware of the state of their fitness, it gives motivation to keep going. It rewards any fitness enthusiast to see the improvement with one's own eyes.

To be able to follow the progress you have to start with measuring the baseline. Polar Fitness Test™ gives you an excellent possibility to create this baseline. For example, if you decide today to start a regular fitness program the first thing you have to do is to conduct the Polar Fitness Test™. Let's assume it gives you an index of 40. This is now your baseline value.

An average change in cardiovascular fitness for adults is 12-15 % in 10-12 weeks if moderate intensity exercise has been conducted 3-4 times a week at least for 30 minutes each time. In our example this would mean an index increasing from 40 to 45 in 3 months. With Polar Fitness Test™ the progress can be monitored even weekly. However, the progress is slow and it is not the exact values, but rather the trend, that is the most important thing to follow. Losing body weight also increases the index.

Validity and reliability of Polar Fitness Test™

Validity of a test means that the test measures what it is supposed to measure and not something else. The test has been originally developed using artificial neural networks on 305 laboratory fitness measurements of healthy Finnish men and women (Väinämö et al. 1996). The correlation coefficient between the laboratory measures and prediction values was 0.97 and the mean error in VO2max prediction was 6.5 %.

In further development of the test 119 fitness measurements of healthy American men and women were included, making a total of 424, and the artificial neural network was modified into Polar Fitness Test™. In a study on 52 healthy men, who didn't belong to the group on whom the test was developed, the mean absolute error in Polar Fitness Test™ prediction was less than 12 % compared to the laboratory measures of maximal aerobic power. Thus the validity of the Polar Fitness Test™ is good.

The reliability of a test is a measure of how consistent and reproducible the test results are on consecutive trials. The reliability of the Polar Fitness Test™ is good. When 11 subjects repeated the test in the morning, in the middle of the day and in the evening during eight days, in both sitting and laying positions, the average individual standard deviation of consecutive test results was less than 8 % from the individual mean value. The standard deviations calculated separately for each time of the day were all smaller than the standard deviation of all results. This indicates that the test can be conducted at any time of the day but it should always be repeated at about the same time.

Polar Fitness Test™ provides an incentive to exercise and improve fitness. It is an excellent motivational tool for anyone who wants to achieve his/her fitness goals.

References

ACSM. The Fitness Book. 2^nd ed. 1998. Human Kinetics.

Devereux Rob. Fitness testing - to do or not to do? Asiafit March/April 1998, p. 24.

Fletcher, Balady, Froelicher, Hartley, Haskell, Pollock. Exercise Standards. A statement for healthcare professionals from the American Heart Association. Circulation 91,2,580-615,1995.

Jackson, Blair, Mahar, Ross and Stuteville. Prediction of functional aerobic capacity without exercise testing. Med Sci Sports Exerc 22,6,863-870,1990.

Väinämö, Tulppo, Mäkikallio, Röning. An atrificial neural network for human aerobic fitness approximation. Proceeding of the International Neural Network ICNN, Washington DC, June 3-6, 1996, pp. 1939-1949.