Track your progress with our do-at-home fitness test

This week is fitness test week at Body Beyond Baby and we are already seeing some amazing results.  Tracking your progress is essential so give this a go at home, record your results, lock in a date to re-test, commit to healthy eating and training and you'll be amazed at what you can achieve.

First up grab a tape measure and record:

• Chest measurement - go across the nipple line and make sure you drop your arms to engage your lats
• Waist measurement - look in the mirror or ask a partner to do it for you, find the smallest part of your waist and take this measurement.
• Belly button - Take the measurement that crosses your belly button
• Hips - Stand with your feet hip width apart - find the widest part of your hips including bum (usually at about crotch height)
• Legs - put one leg on a box or step so that your knee is bent at 90 degrees - about mid way along you will see where it looks biggest when looking from the inside of your leg (where it hangs down a little- so glamorous!) take the measurement here too.  You can do both legs if you like but will more than likely find one leg if larger than the other.

Really it doesn't matter TOO much where you do your measurements so long as you do the exact same ones when you re-measure in a few weeks time.

Now to the activity part:

• Timed run - we do 800m but the most important thing here is to mark out a path that you can repeat again later on so you can do this in a park, at home if you have an open space OR on a treadmill.  Record your best time
• Push-ups - to failure.  Done on either your knees or toes but if you do choose toes complete as many reps as you can on your toes DON'T drop to knees to continue, you need to go to exhaustion OR until you lose form
• Prone hold - for as long as possible. Again done on either knees or toes and good form must be maintained throughout.  Remember that we train to the weakest link so if your pelvic floor is weak or you have a large abdominal separation you need to be either on your knees or do not complete this exercise until you have re-trained your inner unit
• Burpees in one minute - as it sounds, complete as many burpees as possible in one minute.  Read the past post on the three stages of burpees, choose which stage you are at and stick with that throughout this test.  Again if you have pelvic floor weakness, a large separation or any other complaints assess as to whether this exercise is good for you at this time

Remember it is okay to record a DNC (Did Not Complete) if any of these tests are not good for you at the moment - you will probably find as yo increase your fitness levels and rebuild your body that you will at least be able to attempt them next time round and that in itself is an achievement and marked progress.

Enjoy and feel free to share your results with us either here or on our facebook page