Fitness Testing

Contact our fitness specialist at 713-348-4160 or email fitness [at] rice [dot] edu to make your appointment today!

Areas of testing:
Body Composition | Cardiovascular | Muscular Fitness | Flexibility

Muscular Fitness

Muscular fitness is a health-related fitness component because it improves or maintains the following:

1. Fat-free mass and resting metabolic rate, which is related to weight gain
2. Bone mass, which is related to osteoporosis prevention
3. Glucose tolerance, which is related to type 2 diabetes
4. Musculotendinous integrity, which is related to a lower risk of injury, including low-back pain
5. The ability to carry out the activities of daily living, which is related to self-esteem.

The ACSM has included muscular fitness in its recent position stand on the quantity and quality of exercise to achieve and maintain fitness. The assessment of muscular strength and endurance represents a continuum with "muscular strength" at one end of the assessment scale and "muscular endurance" at the other. Tests allowing few repetitions of a task are measuring strength, while those in which great numbers of repetitions can be done are measuring endurance.

Handgrip Dynamometer
Handgrip strength is a useful index of overall musculoskeletal condition due to its functional importance in everyday tasks. The handgrip dynamometer is a useful assessment of muscular strength. Muscular strength refers to the maximal force that can be generated by a specific muscle or muscle.

Muscular Endurance
Muscular endurance is the ability of a muscle group to execute repeated contractions over a prolonged period of time. Simple field tests such as a curl-up (crunch) test or the maximum number of push-ups that can be performed without rest may be used to evaluate the endurance of the abdominal muscle groups and upper body muscles, respectively.

Push-up
The push-up test is administered with male participants in the standard "up" position and female participants in the modified "knee push-up" position.

The push up test will assess muscle strength and endurance in the triceps, anterior deltoids (shoulders), and pectoralis major (chest) muscle groups.

Partial Curl-up (Crunch)
The Partial Curl-up test helps assess a client's abdominal muscular endurance. It is considered superior to the full sit-up test because it is not as sensitive to back injury or chronic back pain.

Use the chart below to help gain a better understanind of how many parial crunches you can do, and where you fit in on the chart.

The Rice University Fitness Testing facilities are located in the East Gym of the Recreation Center. Parking information is available at Rice's maps page.