Not-So-Great Expectations…

Posted By elissa on May 5, 2008 | 4 comments

When I do a body comp assessment, I use calipers and the 7-site calculator over at exrx.net.  It’s a handy little tool, and saves a lot of number crunching.  Did one on John this morning, as a part of the IsaTest test.

I have the calculator page bookmarked, but Internet Explorer was acting up this morning, so I switched to Firefox, and navigated to the page via the menus instead.  While scanning the “fitness testing” page for the right link, I noticed they also had a push up test for upper body muscular endurance.  So just for the hell of it, I challenged John to do the test with me.  When we looked at the instructions, however, it was clear that the “rules” were stacked against him:

Subject performs as many repetitions as possible without pausing. Subject should be encouraged to perform one or two trial repetitions before test. 

• Elbows fully extended
• Male subject (See animation)
  • forefoot or toes on floor
  • legs, hips, and back straight
  • tester places upright fist below chest of male subject
    • contact with testers fist
• Female subject (See animations: feet down, feet up)
  • knees on floor or mat
  • hips and back straight
  • tester gives verbal feed back to female subject on depth of push-up
    • shoulders the same height of elbow

(Emphasis mine) 

In other words, the men have to do full, “regulation” push ups, while the women get to cheat!

Screw that.  I did the “men’s” test, and – just to make it more sporting – went all the way down to the floor on each rep.  This added a good 3 – 4 inches to the range of motion, as there was no tester’s fist in the way (or any other body parts, for that matter: small breasts are a fringe benefit of being very lean).  I knocked out 34 before my arms froze up – which was equivalent to a score of 82 for a man my age.

Obviously, I need to do more endurance-type arm work.  While I still beat John by 8 reps, I would have preferred a larger margin of victory. 😀

Beyond that, however, the whole test set up annoyed me, as the expectations for women’s fitness were so much lower than for men’s.   Sure, men are – on average – larger and stronger than women are – so lower performance standards are to be expected.   But that much lower?  And for a fitness test, no less?  That’s downright insulting.  We’d be upset if “the system” employed a double standard for intellectual achievement.  It shouldn’t be acceptable to have such “dumbed down” standards for women’s strength/endurance either.

Women can – and should – be able to manage basic bodyweight exercises…we don’t need special “gurl” variations.

Victoria Scott understands this:

Every three months, Seattle personal trainer Victoria Scott starts a new early morning conditioning class at Sand Point Education Center in Magnuson Park. Her summer class, all women, finished up the term last Friday at 6 a.m. sharp.

Those women averaged more than 20 perfect-form push-ups apiece. Back in June, the class best was about five and some of the women couldn’t do more than two.

In just three months of training, all the women in her class could manage 20 push-ups in good form.  They’re not special, either – it’s something any reasonably healthy woman can train up to.  And the payoff is more than just improved physical strength/endurance…there’s also a tremendous increase in physical confidence that goes along with it.  As one 52-year old female member of the “Bodybuilding Revealed” forum wrote to me:

“Godddd damn 10 count em 10 nice neat pushups. I stopped at 10, didn’t want to get too crazy. That means I am in the BEST upper body shape of my life & not even close yet to where I want to be.

Got down on the mat, went to town… well to 10.

Thanks Elissa, without your suggestion I would never have known I CAN DO PUSHUPS! Awesome! I am flying on Cloud 9! I can see 20… around the corner… LOL (and yea, i have been asked this question TWICE in last 30 minutes, they were regulation pushups none of those weird “girl” pushups they foisted on us in gym class).”

When you know you can do things you never thought you could, it can change your whole outlook on fitness.  To hell with not-so-great expectations: we can do better than “they” think!