Polar Research, The Polar Fitness Test™
This information was extracted from the Polar Finland site...
R. Laukkanen, H. Kinnunen, E. Kiuru/Polar Electro Oy
Information about Polar Fitness Test™ and fitness testing in general
What is Cardiovascular Fitness?
Cardiovascular (or aerobic) fitness is one of the most important components of fitness. It
is measured as the amount of oxygen transported in the blood and pumped by the heart to
the working muscles and as the efficiency of the muscles to use that oxygen.
Increasing cardiovascular fitness means increasing the capability of the heart and the
rest of the cardiovascular system in their most important task, to supply oxygen and
energy to your body.
Having good cardiovascular fitness has many health benefits. For example, it decreases
your risk of cardiovascular diseases, stroke, high blood pressure and other diseases.
Cardiovascular fitness is best improved by activities, which employ large muscle groups
working dynamically. Such activities include walking, jogging, running, swimming, skating,
cycling, stair climbing and cross-country skiing.
The heart is like any other muscle - it becomes stronger and more efficient after
practise. Heart rate is a quantitative measure of heart's work. At rest a healthy heart of
an average individual beats approximately 70 beats per minute. A conditioned heart beats
much less at rest, only 40 to 50 beats per minute or even less. Heart rate variability is
a quality measure of heart's work. The lower the resting heart rate the higher the heart
rate variability, and thus the better the quality of heart's functions.
Cardiovascular fitness is related to age, gender, exercise habits, heredity and
cardiovascular clinical status. Maximum values occur between ages 15 and 30 years,
decreasing progressively with age. At the age of 60, the mean maximal aerobic power in men
is approximately three fourths of that at the age of 20. With sedentary lifestyle, there
is a 10 % reduction in the mean maximal aerobic power per decade, the reduction with an
active lifestyle being less than 5 %.
Fitness tests for aerobic fitness
There are numerous fitness tests for aerobic fitness in the world ranging from
sophisticated laboratory tests to simple field tests. They are all designed to measure or
predict oxygen uptake (maximal aerobic power, VO2max). 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 maximal test procedures used for testing cardiovascular fitness
are:
1. Maximal oxygen uptake test (on a treadmill or cycle ergometer)
2. Shuttle run test (Leger test)
3. Continuous run test for a fixed time or distance (Cooper 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™
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 new Polar M-series heart rate
monitors models M51 and M52. 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.
Interpreting the test results
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 VO2max, a commonly used descriptor of aerobic fitness. Therefore the range
for the Polar Fitness Index™ is the same as that for VO2max, 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).
| Age, yrs |
VO2max, |
ml/min/kg |
| |
Men |
Women |
| 20-29 |
43(7) |
36(7) |
| 30-39 |
42(7) |
34(6) |
| 40-49 |
40(7) |
32(6) |
| 50-59 |
36(7) |
29(5) |
| 60-69 |
33(7) |
27(5) |
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.
Safety
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.
Intimacy
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 organised 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 deviation 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. 2nd ed. Human Kinetics. 1998.
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.
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