Essentials: How to Assess & Improve All Aspects of Your Fitness | Dr. Andy Galpin
Andrew Huberman
Two Goals of Fitness 0:31
When people think about exercise, they usually have two goals in mind. One is appearance, wanting to look a certain way, whether that means being bigger, leaner, or something else. The other is functionality, wanting to perform a certain way, such as being stronger, more mobile, or having more energy through the day. Both categories require understanding where you need to focus your training so you can achieve your goals now while also being able to maintain them for a long wellness span throughout life.
Nine Physiological Adaptations 2:32
Physical adaptations from exercise can be grouped into nine areas. The first is skill or technique, meaning how well you perform a movement like running or swinging a golf club. The second is speed, moving at higher velocity or with better acceleration, and the third is power, which is speed multiplied by force. The fourth is force or strength, the maximum amount you can move one time, which is different from the sixth adaptation, muscular endurance, the number of repetitions you can do of a movement. The fifth is muscle hypertrophy, simply the size of your muscle, the first adaptation tied to appearance rather than function. The seventh is anaerobic capacity, the maximum work you can do in about 30 to 120 seconds of all out effort. The eighth is maximal aerobic capacity, tied to your true VO2 max and typically reached in an 8 to 15 minute effort. The ninth is long duration endurance, your ability to sustain submaximal work for 20 to 60 minutes or more without breaks, often called steady state training or cardio.
Checking Movement Skill 6:00
To assess movement skill without a professional, pick a representative exercise for an upper body press, an upper body pull, a lower body press, and a lower body pull, such as a push-up, a pull-up or bent row, a squat, and a deadlift. Record yourself from the front and the side doing three to ten slow, controlled reps of each, and look for four things: symmetry between your left and right sides, stability such as knees shaking during a squat, awareness of basic form points like keeping heels on the ground, and full range of motion through each joint. Score each movement zero to three, where zero means you are at high risk of injury and should not do the exercise, one means there is a minor flaw requiring caution with load, and higher scores mean you are in reasonably good shape to proceed.
Speed and Power Tests 9:30
Speed is not something most people need to formally test unless they are high performance athletes, who might run a 40 yard dash or use a velocity transducer on a barbell. Power can be measured with a standing broad jump, jumping as far forward as possible from a still position and measuring from the starting line to the back heel on landing. A rough benchmark is that you should be able to jump roughly your own height, with women adjusting down about 15 percent, while elite athletes like NFL players might jump 9 to 11 feet; the point of this test is to catch red flags, not to optimize performance.
Measuring Strength 11:31
Grip strength can be tested with a hand grip dynamometer, aiming for a minimum of 40 kilograms for men and about 35 for women, with no more than 10 percent difference between hands. A dead hang from a pull-up bar is another option, with 30 seconds as a baseline, 30 to 50 seconds as good, and over 60 seconds as strong, though very heavy or very light body weights can skew this test. For leg strength, a leg extension test using your body weight as the target load works well, dropping about 10 percent per decade after age 40. A front squat or goblet squat hold, using about half your body weight held at the bottom position for 45 seconds, offers a more functional alternative that also reflects core and low back stability, with a lighter starting target of a third of body weight for 30 seconds.
Testing Strength Safely 16:01
Repetition conversion equations let you estimate a one rep max without testing to failure, by lifting a near-maximal load for fewer than five reps and entering the result into an online calculator; accuracy drops once you go past five reps. Two caveats matter here: only push to maximum effort if your technique is solid, substituting an easier test like the leg extension if you are not comfortable with something like the front squat, and always standardize your warm-up protocol so that repeated tests over time are comparable.
Assessing Muscle Size 17:31
Hypertrophy has an aesthetic side that is entirely a personal preference, but there is also a health-relevant minimum amount of muscle you need. A DEXA scan or similar body composition test can give you a fat-free mass index, or FFMI, using your weight, body fat percentage, and height. Men should aim for an FFMI of 20 or higher and women for 18 or higher, assuming body fat is under about 30 percent for men and 35 percent for women, since a high FFMI paired with very high body fat just indicates a large body rather than a fit one. Falling below 17 for men or 15 for women signals a fairly severe muscle deficiency.
Muscular Endurance Benchmarks 19:00
Muscular endurance can be checked with a front plank held for 60 seconds or a side plank for 45 seconds, and men should be able to do at least 25 consecutive full push-ups while women should aim for at least 15, with anything under 5 reps signaling a problem. Another method is to take a strength test result, load it to 75 percent, and see how many reps you can perform, aiming for more than eight repetitions to indicate healthy muscular endurance.
Anaerobic Capacity and Heart Rate 23:00
Anaerobic capacity is best measured in a lab with a 30 second Wingate test or a 60 second Bosco protocol involving repeated vertical jumps, but a sprint, airbike, or rowing effort of 30 to 60 seconds at maximum exertion works outside a lab too. Rather than focusing on hitting your predicted maximum heart rate of 220 minus your age, which is a rough and unreliable number, the more useful metric is heart rate recovery. After reaching exhaustion, you should recover roughly half a beat per second, meaning about 30 beats of recovery in the first minute, 60 by two minutes, and continuing to halve after that; slower recovery points to a problem with anaerobic or cardiovascular capacity.
Aerobic Capacity Testing 24:01
Maximal aerobic capacity, or VO2 max, is best measured in a lab using a mask that collects your gases during a specific graded running protocol. Without lab access, the 12 minute Cooper test is a solid substitute, where you run as far as possible in 12 minutes and enter that distance into an online calculator to estimate your VO2 max, with distances typically ranging from about one to over two miles depending on fitness level.
The walk test alternative 24:31
If running for the twelve minute test isn't possible, because of knee pain, back pain, or general unfitness, you can use the Rockport one mile submaximal walk test instead. You simply walk one mile, record your time and your heart rate at the end, then plug those numbers into a standard calculation to get an estimate of your VO2 max. These calculations are standardized, so it doesn't matter where you find the calculator, since they all run off the same equation.
Long duration steady state test 25:00
This ninth test isn't tied to a specific number. Instead, you pick an activity from your own life, like a loop around your house, and see whether you can maintain a steady, non-walking pace for at least twenty minutes without stopping, taking a break, or resting. Ideally you do this while breathing only through your nose, since that is a sign you are working at a comfortable, sustainable intensity.
How often and in what order 26:31
Run this full battery of tests once a year, treating it like an annual physical, ideally spread across three days. Start with non-fatiguing measures like body composition and movement screens while you are fresh and well rested, since acute exercise and soreness can distort those results. Then do skill, maximum strength, and power tests early in the day, followed by muscular endurance tests, saving anaerobic and VO2 max testing for separate sessions.
Why this testing matters 29:02
The goal isn't to be optimal in every category, but to catch and fix any severe performance anchor before it limits you elsewhere. Once you move a weak area out of the concerning zone, you're free to keep chasing whatever specific goal motivates you, whether that's endurance, strength, or something else you love training for.
VO2 max benchmarks 29:31
For general health, the minimum VO2 max target is thirty five milliliters per kilogram per minute for men and thirty for women. For strong performance, aim for men above fifty, ideally above fifty five, and women above fifty as well.
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