Baseline Measurements

I may get paid very little as a graduate student, but being a student has its perks. For starters, I get to use the recreational gym center for free, which really makes no difference because I go to Crossfit anyway, but I also get to use all their fitness assessment services! I thought I'd take advantage of these services (and this blog) to get some baseline measurements and see where I'm at fitness-wise. I started Crossfit in July 2009, and unfortunately don't have measurements from that point, but I'm anxious to see how the numbers I received this go around will improve by April or May. So, without further ado, here are the numbers!

To begin, I'm 62. 5 inches tall (5'2.5" - which means I shrunk from the last time I was at the doctor's office!) and I weigh in at 119.5 lbs. Ok, that's all stuff you can get anywhere. Here's the new and interesting stuff I got from my Bod Pod body fat mass assessment on January 22, 2010:

22.6% Fat
77.4% Fat free mass
26.339 lb Fat mass
90.375 Fat free mass
2.957L Thoracic gas volume (I can't remember what this is really a measurement of, my lung size maybe?)

These numbers put me in the "moderately lean" category according to the ACSM guidelines. I was pretty pleased with those results, which suggest that I need about 1924 kCal/day to maintain an active lifestyle. I also completed some muscular endurance and muscular strength assessments on January 28, 2010 (with my percentile rankings when compared to a sample population of similar age and sex):

60 BPM Resting heart rate (90%)
41 reps Partial curl-ups (75%)
31 reps Push-ups, on knees (88%)
70 lbs Bench press (39%)
441 lbs Leg press, based on submax leg ratio to weight (90%)
41 cm Sit-reach hip flexion (90%)

So the main takeaway from this assessment was that I have NO upper body strength, as evidenced by the bench press. This is one area I plan on working more on in the future - strict presses, handstand push-ups, etc. On the plus side, you'll recall my post about my maxing out the leg press machine and the number I posted here is the hypothesized weight I'd be able to leg press based on that result. Another interesting note - I was happy with my body fat analysis before my assessor put the numbers into her fancy-dancy computer program and it spit out that I ranked in the 47th percentile compared to a sample population! That means I was slightly below average (which is 50th percentile) in terms of an appropriate body fat. What??? Not to sound like a "skinny b*tch," but do you know what I look like? I'm ASIAN! People could literally step on me and squash me I'm so tiny!

Ok, rant over. The reason I'm posting all this information today is because I finally completed the final portion of my assessment - the VO2 Max test of cardiovascular endurance. Results:

At peak -
47.6 mkm (87%)
178 BPM heart rate

Anaerobic threshold -
23.1 mkm
128 BPM heart rate

HR recovery
146 BPM, 1 minute
123 BPM, 2 minutes

Basically, they made me run on a treadmill at a 5 mph pace with a steep incline until I felt like I couldn't run anymore. To be honest, my legs gave out before my heart and lungs felt like they were going to give out, so I'm pretty confident that these results will improve next time (because I likely won't be doing KB swings at Crossfit St. Paul the day before!). Not that these are bad results, in fact I was kind of shocked at how high they were!

If I remember correctly, the anaerobic threshold point is when my body switches from using aerobic pathways to anaerobic pathways (in essence, it becomes more "inefficient" and likely to tire out). A higher anaerobic threshold signifies that your body is able to go harder for longer, and is a good place to start in order to improve overall VO2 Max. We'll see if I can train this aspect, I'm pretty pleased with the results as is...

Well, there you have it. My fitness in numbers. Now just to work on improving those numbers!