Fitness assessments at Owensboro Health Healthpark are designed to help new members set and achieve health and fitness goals.
According to Jason Anderson, the health park’s health and fitness manager, each new member has the opportunity to receive a fitness rating that tests various aspects of a person’s physical fitness including resting heart rate, resting blood pressure, height and weight, calculated body mass index number, body composition, strength , Flexibility and others
The purpose, Anderson said, is not to tell a person what they’re doing wrong, but rather to develop an exercise routine that is specific to that person and their fitness goals
“Most of the people who join the health park come for reasons including their fitness, and that looks like a lot of different things like losing weight, gaining weight, getting fit,” he said. “Often times people don’t know exactly how to get there. By giving them the opportunity to perform a fitness assessment, we can develop a specific training recipe that they can use to achieve their fitness goals. “
Assessments conducted by sports medicine-trained fitness trainers can also be tailored to a person’s unique needs, Anderson said, such as when they have back problems, knee problems, or cannot lift heavy objects.
“We’re adapting this test protocol to the person we’re working with because, as you can imagine, people come to us who have no restrictions and everything is fine,” he said. But we also have people who come to us who have orthopedic problems, knee problems or back problems and whom we have to deal with.
Once a fitness assessment has been carried out, the trainer will create an exercise recipe to help individuals achieve their goals and walk them through the routine, one exercise at a time, showing them how to use machines and how much weight to lift.
The top priority, Anderson said, is safety.
“We want to guarantee people’s safety. This assessment highlights strengths and weaknesses that need to be worked on, but for a lot of people when they walk into a gym, especially if they haven’t been there in a long time, it can be very intimidating, “he said.” With that we’re showing them how to train safely and effectively and hopefully minimize unfair risks during training. “
The whole purpose, he said, is to ensure that people can come into the facility and achieve their goals with accessible help and advice from trained individuals.
Some, he said, may choose not to undergo the fitness assessment out of embarrassment, but the goal is not to shame anyone, but rather to help them on their fitness path and show them how far they have come on the path.
“The reason we’re doing this fitness assessment isn’t because we can shake our finger at you and say, ‘Boy, you’re really bad or you’re good at it,’ but the reason we’re doing this assessment is to get a basic measurement of where that person is, ”he said.
