A handbook of methods for the study of adolescent children.Physical Fitness Tests.

Abstract

This chapter discusses physical fitness tests. It is noted that no satisfactory test is available as a measure of physical fitness, physical efficiency or fatigue. Of the tests which have been employed most have to do with the response of the circulatory system to a measured amount of exercise. Schneider devised a test, which has since been used rather widely, to check the physical fitness and reliability of aviators to handle airplanes. He was concerned with those cardiovascular responses which gave some evidence of fatigue or altered health. The author further notes that a test referred to as a metabolic exercise tolerance test described several years ago by Katz, Soskin, and their co-workers is of considerable interest. This technique depends upon the measurement of excess oxygen consumption during measured exercise, oxygen debt and recovery time. On the basis that patients with organic heart disease require a greater amount of oxygen to perform and recover from a given amount of work than do normal people, the authors suggest that this sort of test should serve as a good criterion of cardiac status and of cardiac capacity. The use of this test in a group of so-called normal children should produce interesting individual differences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)