| When setting goals, it is extremely important to have a clear picture of your health and fitness. This will give you an idea of the areas in which you need to improve and focus your energy. There are many approaches to sustaining high-quality health and fitness, all of which should be highly individualised depending on factors such as age, gender, and injury history. An individualised training program should always be based on accurate measures that can be used to determine your specific needs, and to help you be realistic in your expectations. | 
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I utilise the following measures to assess the health and fitness status of my clients, and to help them set goals that are specific to their individual needs:
Body Weight
How much you weigh is a risk factor for many chronic diseases that are becoming increasingly prevalent in our society. As you are well aware, the number of people who are overweight or obese has reached epidemic proportions, and so too has the prevalence of type 2 diabetes and heart disease. Accordingly, there are well-established links between being overweight and the incidence of most chronic diseases.
Body Mass Index (BMI)
Body Mass Index is a way of categorising your weight according to your height. This measure will classify you as being underweight, healthy weight, overweight, or obese. A high BMI is often associated with an increased risk of chronic disease. However, it is critical to note that BMI does not tell you where you are storing your weight, which is one of the most important elements of assessing health.
Waist Circumference
Simply by walking down the street, you will notice that people come in different shapes and sizes. Where an individual stores their weight is very important in determining their chronic disease risk. For example, having a high waist circumference can be more detrimental to your health as opposed to storing weight in your legs or upper body. Therefore, measuring your waist circumference is a key indicator of your health status.
Healthy men should have a waist circumference less than 94 cm, and healthy women should have a waist circumference less than 80 cm.
Healthy men should have a waist circumference less than 94 cm, and healthy women should have a waist circumference less than 80 cm.
Cardiovascular Fitness
Do you feel out of breath completing everyday tasks, such as walking up the stairs at work? This is an indication that your cardiovascular fitness may not be at the level that it should be for optimal health. Low cardiovascular fitness is naturally associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, such as a heart attack. At Inspire Fitness, we use a submaximal fitness test to determine your cardiovascular fitness. During the test, we monitor your heart rate in response to increasing exercise intensity, which allows us to determine your level of fitness according to your gender, age, and weight. This is also a particularly useful tool for setting concrete and quantifiable fitness goals for your training.
This is only a snapshot of the many measures we use at Inspire Fitness to help our clients set measurable goals based on the specific areas in which they need to improve their health and fitness. As each and everyone one of us are different, the measures we use need to be specific to each individual and similarly, the goals we set need to be realistic.
These measures should be assessed every 6-8 weeks to monitor your ongoing progress and to inform any adjustments to your training program. It is important to note that, while improvement in these areas is valuable, simply feeling better from exercising and investing some time in your "physical capital" is just as significant as seeing a change in body weight and cardiovascular fitness.
These measures should be assessed every 6-8 weeks to monitor your ongoing progress and to inform any adjustments to your training program. It is important to note that, while improvement in these areas is valuable, simply feeling better from exercising and investing some time in your "physical capital" is just as significant as seeing a change in body weight and cardiovascular fitness.
Written by Rory Scott, Accredited Exercise Physiologist.
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