Reveal Your Real Fitness with Zing’s Fitness Test [Feature Spotlight]

It can be tough to gauge your fitness levels accurately. Often, it feels like relying on guesswork or taking assessments that don’t truly reflect our abilities – which leads to frustration, ineffective workouts, and even injury. The solution? Zing Coach’s Fitness Test. By using your camera to track and analyze your movements, Zing provides a precise, personalized fitness assessment in just a few minutes. This allows you to identify your strengths, uncover areas that need improvement, and tailor your workouts to maximize results. Read on to find out how it works.

What is a Fitness Test

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Coaches regularly use fitness tests to assess subjects’ physical fitness and the improvements attained through consistent working out. But it can be challenging to measure. There are two primary types of fitness tests that trainers and sports scientists use: laboratory-based assessments and field-based tests.

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Laboratory-Based Fitness Tests

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A laboratory test is a controlled assessment conducted in a specialized environment, typically using advanced equipment and technology. These tests accurately measure specific aspects of physical fitness, like VO2max testing, which evaluates aerobic capacity by measuring oxygen consumption during intense exercise. Laboratory tests are precise but often require professional supervision and are more resource-intensive compared to field tests.

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Field-Based Fitness Tests

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Not everyone can afford to get into a lab to test their fitness. An alternative is field-based testing, which is a practical assessment conducted in a natural or everyday setting. These tests use minimal equipment and resources to measure various aspects of physical fitness in environments like gyms or at home. Field-based tests are valued for their convenience, low cost, and ability to test multiple participants simultaneously, though they are often less precise than laboratory tests.

Why should you test your fitness?

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Health experts agree that being as physically fit is a priority for everyone. Fitness tests that accurately assess your physical condition and activity levels offer a clear and objective measure of your current capabilities. These tests reveal your strengths, whether in endurance, strength, or flexibility, and they also help identify areas where your fitness may be lacking. Poor fitness can increase your risk of serious health issues, such as cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, cancer, high blood pressure, and obesity. By identifying these weaknesses, you can better understand how your body performs, allowing you to set realistic goals, tailor your workouts to address specific deficiencies and track your progress over time.

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How does Zing’s Fitness Test work?

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Zing Coach’s fitness test seamlessly combines the scientific precision and data-capturing capabilities of laboratory fitness assessments with the practicality and simplicity of traditional field tests, offering you a comprehensive yet accessible evaluation of your fitness levels that can be done anywhere and uncovers insights into your fitness that can be applied to your training. Fitness tests should be simple and cause minimal discomfort, which is why Zing‘s Fitness Test combines scientific rigor with practicality, making it accessible and relevant to users without overwhelming them with overly complex or extensive testing procedures. The specific exercises for Zing’s Fitness Test – push-ups, bodyweight squats, and high knee runs were carefully selected for their relevance to the fitness goals being assessed and their reliability. 

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How to Do Zing’s Fitness Test

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1. Open the Zing Coach App
2. On the Workout Tab, scroll down to “Fitness Boosters.”
3. Swipe to find the “Take Fitness Test” option.
4. Tap the “Take Fitness Test” and follow the on-screen instructions.
5. Perform the full test, which includes 60 seconds each of squats, push-ups, and running in place. The goal is to do as many reps as you can during each exercise.
6. Zing uses your camera to monitor your movements during the test, ensuring each rep is counted accurately and that your form is correct.

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Getting Your Fitness Score

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Once you’ve completed the exercises, Zing will analyze your performance, assessing both the quantity and quality of your reps. Based on your performance, Zing will calculate your Fitness Score. This score will be used to personalize the muscle focus and intensity of your future workouts, ensuring they’re tailored to your current fitness level. You can find your Fitness Score and detailed results in the app's Analytics Tab. You can also repeat the test whenever you like to try to increase your score.

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Anaerobic Fitness

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While measuring VO2 max and other markers of aerobic fitness and cardiorespiratory endurance are valuable, they should not be the sole focus of a comprehensive fitness assessment. Not all activities require high aerobic capacity, and resistance training is one of them. Some incredibly strong athletes excel with minimal aerobic training. Zing Coach’s fitness test, while incorporating some aerobic elements, primarily emphasizes anaerobic exercises (like high knee runs and push-ups) to provide a more balanced and targeted approach to fitness testing.​

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Form

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The best test of athletic performance is often the performance itself. While some fitness tests can measure specific aspects of fitness like strength or aerobic power, they may not fully capture a person’s ability to perform in a real-world scenario. That’s why Zing Fitness Test’s uses Zing Vision – advanced computer vision technology – to capture and analyze the user’s movement during each rep to assess the efficacy of each rep. The metrics used in the test are consistently reliable across multiple testing sessions to ensure that any changes in performance truly reflect changes in fitness rather than variability in the test itself. 

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Tips for Testing

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To get the most accurate picture of your fitness, make sure you test, test and retest over extended time. It’s normal for there to be variability in your Fitness Score – it depends on your performance over time, which can make it difficult to detect small changes in fitness. Motivation and effort can impact test results, and a learning effect can also come into play as you get more used to the format. That’s why it’s important that you complete Zing’s Fitness Test regularly as you may perform better on subsequent attempts simply due to becoming more familiar it, and be cautious when interpreting small differences in test results, as they might not necessarily indicate significant changes in fitness.

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Fitness is a journey, not a destination. By regularly assessing your fitness level, not only do you gain valuable insights into your strengths and areas for improvement, but you also empower yourself to push boundaries and achieve more challenging goals. With Zing Coach by your side, every rep, every test, and every workout brings you one step closer to becoming the best version of yourself. So, take the test, track your progress, and challenge yourself to improve your score whenever you’re ready. Your future self will thank you!

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Please note that Zing's fitness test is designed to assess your physical fitness levels only. It does not provide a comprehensive evaluation of your overall health. For a complete health assessment, we strongly recommend consulting with a physician.

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