- 1 Deadlift: One-rep max of 2 x body weight (general strength)
- 2 Chin-ups: 20 (usable upper body strength)
- 3 100m sprint: Under 13 seconds (speed)
- 4 One mile: Under 6 minutes (endurance)
- 5 Body-fat: 10-12% - a six-pack is just visible (health)
These are not elite standards, but achieving all five would likely take you into the top 1% of the population. You’d be in tremendous physical shape.
The most challenging for an older person (60yrs+) to achieve is a sub-13sec sprint; sub-14secs would be more appropriate (the others are not too difficult). Retaining the ability, as you age, to generate dynamic muscular contractions provides solid information about the general physical state of the muscles, tendons, ligaments and nerves. If you can do it without a warm-up, even better. Being able to turn on strength, quickness and agility without any warm-up is the pure expression of youth.
There are different health tests a person can do: In a clinic/lab – blood tests, biomarker tests, blood pressure, heart rate, scans; in a gym - stress tests, body fat, VO2 max, and so on. That’s all well and good, but these five simple performance tests you can do yourself and are easy to measure. Physical performance is an excellent indicator of the general health of the body. There is no point adding in more target categories - vertical high jump, rowing ability, back-flips, and so on, as it’s the engine in the car that ultimately determines performance not what the car can be used for. The five categories give us a global view of the state of the ’engine’. That’s enough.