Free Senior Fitness Testing With A Personal Trainer At Live Fit In Westlake, Ohio.
Welcome to Live Fit Personal Training and Nutrition! We are located in Westlake Ohio and are offering free Senior Fitness Testing (SFT) to our favorite gym goers, Seniors! If you are over 60, you are eligible to participate. Normally, we think of exercise for young people. Wrong! Our life expectancy is increasing and our quality of life is highly determined by our ability to take care of ourselves. The SFT is designed to help us find which body parts aren't working as well as they should for our age. Lets face it, getting older isn't fun but making sure we can take care of ourselves as we age is a big part of our happiness. And that is what this is all about- making sure we help you feel good for your age!
So what is SFT? In a nutshell, it's a quick series of timed exercises that uncover body parts that might not be working as good as they used to! Any fitness level can do it, and we promise you'll have fun :-) First, we want you to know the SFT was designed by really, really smart people. They used scientific standards to make this test reliable and valid in assessing strength, endurance, flexibility, agility and balance. Over 7,000 men and women aged 60 to 94 were used to develop performance standards.
The SFT consists of 6 different exercises/movements that are super easy. Check out the picture below of our client Karen, performing the "Chair Sit and Reach Test". This test is assessing lower body flexibility, particularly hamstring flexibility, which is important for good posture. Lower body flexibility helps prevent lower back pain and injuries and reduces the risk of falling. A quick side note; falls are a big reason why older adults end up at the hospital and with outrageous medical bills! And yes, it could happen to you! Improving your lower body flexibility helps with things like walking, stair climbing and getting in and out of the car and reduces that fall risk.
Okay, so what does it mean? Once the test is done, we'll interpret the results for you. Again, these scores come from those really smart research people mentioned above that did all the analyzing from over 267 different test sites throughout the United States! Scores are based on your age group in increments of 5 years, so age 60-64 is one group, 65-69 is another group and so on. For example, in the Chair Sit-and-Reach Test, a 70-year-old male that can reach 7.5 inches past his toes would get a score in the 95th percentile. This means he is better than 95% of his peers and only 5% of his peers would be better than him at performing this test. On the flip side, if this 70-year-old male is 6 inches AWAY from reaching his toes, he is in the 10th percentile. If you receive scores that are low like this, your personal trainer comes up with a workout plan designed to help improve your score.
Are wondering about our participant Karen? For our participants' sake, we won't give out her age (we love you Karen!) Karen scored between 35-40% for her age group. Karen says this is not good enough and wants to increase her score :-) You go Karen! Her personal trainer has designed specific exercises during her sessions to help her increase her hamstring flexibility. Please stay tuned to see her progress and the other 5 tests of the SFT.
Are you interested in seeing how you rank against your peers? Check out our home page and give us a call to set up a time to test. Remember, the test is free for all seniors 60 years or older. Our gym here in Cleveland is a private one on one studio, so you will have your own trainer during the test. If you get a chance, you might be able to catch our Registered Dietitian for some nutrition tips. We hope to see you soon!
Pictured above, our intern Mary, from the University of Akron, is helping Karen perform the Chair Sit-and-Reach Test
