How to Test Yourself.

Benchmark yourself.

That’s right; hold yourself to your progress.  What I’m asking you to do is to test yourself.  Not in the Marines’ “Everyday you don’t test yourself is a day wasted sir!” way, but by performing a workout that tests your current ability against your past ability.

The athletes reading this post are all slapping their foreheads and saying, “Of course!  How obvious.”  But for those of us whose lives aren’t under such close scrutiny (”8:15am?  Time for your 500mg of bee pollen!”), benchmarking performance isn’t intuitive. 

Of course, benchmarking makes sense if you think about it. Perform x amount of work for x length of time, and you have the formula for prescribable, progressable, and scalable exercise. Want to improve? Simple; increase your power output (i.e., increase the amount of work done, the length of time, or both). Every single exercise program that gets results has this simple formula at its core.  Sure, you can lift more in the Lateral Raise now than two years ago (at least, I hope so), when you started.  But how does that really compare?  And is there a way to look at the whole picture instead of parts of the whole?

Using a benchmarking workout is probably the best way to compare the current you with prior, lesser versions of yourself.  While a benchmarking workout can be many things, I’ll loosely define it here as any workout with fixed parameters that allow for infinite progression.

Crossfit’s “Cindy” WOD is a great example of a benchmarking workout.  The parameters are fixed and simple:

One round = 5 Pull-ups, 10 Push-ups, 15 Squats; As many rounds as possible in 20 min.

In May, you perform Cindy and only get 10 rounds in.  Then, you train for two months, and curious, you try another Cindy.  If you get more than 10 rounds, congratulations; you’ve improved, and you can show it in a measurable and definable way.

Of course, metabolic conditioning may not be your cup of tea; perhaps pure strength is your thing.  Your benchmark workout might be your 5 RM (the maximum weight you can lift for 5 reps) of Leg Press, Bench Press, and Bent-Over Row.  You can imagine how easy benchmarking is if you’re involved in a sport (times, rounds, serves, punches, etc.).  And fat loss?  The only metric worth caring about – total body fat, however you choose to measure it.

If you’ve not done so before, or if you’re looking for a tool to help you restart your motivation, give benchmarking a try.  Create (or find) a workout that you can set a baseline with.  Train for a little while, then test yourself again.