The importance of maintaining fitness and mobility throughout adult life just received a ringing endorsement from the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports. The Council, established by the Secretary of Health and Human resources under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, was originally created in 1956 to focus on youth fitness. In 1963, the Council expanded its charter to include the health and activity level of all Americans, but in 1966, a President's Challenge Program for motivating healthy fitness levels through various tests and exercises addressed only school-age kids. This youth physical fitness test has been administered in gym classes to kids in grade school all over America ever since.

This summer, the President's Fitness Challenge Program announced that it’s not just for grade schoolers anymore. Emphasizing the shift in public consciousness that encouraging and maintaining the health and activity levels of adults and the aging population has become one of the nation's top priorities, the President's Council has created the first-ever Adult Fitness Test: "What began as a national youth fitness test has grown up. Today, the President's Challenge takes staying active beyond the school gym and into everyday life." The goal of the adult test is to emphasize increased physical activity in areas that will enable Americans to maintain mobility and limit disabling health problems throughout their lives.

If you are over 18 and want to see if your own fitness levels are up to federal standards, the test for adults is on-line and available for you. Don’t worry, you won’t have to do the shuttle run or those dreaded pull ups, but some of the exercises will be strikingly familiar to the days back in middle school PE class. The Adult Fitness Test is actually a series of 4 tests that provide a general measure of fitness in the areas of aerobic capacity, muscular strength and endurance, flexibility, and body composition.

So how exactly does the test work? There are complete directions for the test online. First, when you are planning to get started, it is helpful to find a partner to help collect and record the results for each challenge. Then let the games begin! To test Aerobic Fitness, you are asked, depending on your exercise routine, either to walk one mile while recording pulse rate or run 1.5 miles as quickly as possible. To test Muscular Strength and Endurance, you are asked to perform one minute of sit-ups and as many push-ups as possible at one time. For testing Flexibility, you will use a yardstick to measure the longest out of three forward stretches from a “sit and reach” position. Finally, for testing Body Composition, you will measure both your Body Mass Index (BMI; a ratio of your weight over your height squared) and waist circumference.

When taking the Adult Fitness Test, you do not need to perform the challenges in any specific order nor on the same day. Once completed, you can record your scores on the adult fitness website where each of the four tests includes a “FITT” box suggesting specific ways to improve fitness in that particular area of physical health. The FITT box, as the acronym implies, makes recommendations for Frequency, Intensity, Time, and Type of exercise. For example, to improve your Flexibility Test results, the FITT box suggests the following: engaging in stretches 3 days a week (Frequency); stretching in a way that creates muscle tension but not pain (Intensity); holding each stretch for 10 to 30 seconds and repeating one to two more times (Time); and starting with static stretches then adding dynamic stretches to enhance variety (Type). If you choose to enter your scores into the website, an online tracking system provides your initial fitness evaluation from the President's Fitness Council, allowing you to compare your results to your peers and to follow your progress as you become more physically active. Novice or expert, this tool tells you where you are now and how to get where you want to be: ready, set, go!

To receive instructions and sign up for the test, visit the website at www.adultfitness.org