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Fitness testing is an essential tool in the armoury of any person that wishes to improve their exercise related fitness. Fitness testing helps to identify strengths and weaknesses in performance, physiological potential, the success of a training programme and the results can used to compare against norms of a group.

There are hundreds of types of fitness test used in sport and exercises contexts, there are tests available for the health related and skill related components of fitness. When deciding on which tests to use it is important to consider a number of factors, the most notable are; specificity, validity, reliability, and sensitivity.

Specificity
This factor states that a test should be related to the type of exercise/sport that a person undertakes. If you train to compete in swimming events then the fitness test should involve swimming, there is little use testing yourself using a running fitness test. This example represents the minimum degree of specificity, if for example, your sport is basketball a sport that includes backwards, sidewards, forwards and diagonal running then a simple treadmill running test may not be specific enough. A test that incorporates all the running actions would produce results more specific to basketball.

Validity
This factor states that a test must measure what it sets out to measure in order to be valid. It is the ability of a test to provide accurate results that can be relied on. For example, a sit up test is a valid measure of abdominal endurance, it is not a valid measure of maximal abdominal strength.

Reliability
If the results of a test can be repeated using the same procedure, then the test is said to be reliable. In theory if a person performs a test on any given day and then repeats the test on a subsequent occasion, with no change in any other facto, the test should produce the same result for it to be considered reliable. In reality this is unlikely to happen simply because people are different from one day to the next. Therein lies the problem we are faced in determining reliable results from a fitness test. Research has shown that fitness testing is subject to approximately 5% random error. So if a person is tested using twice using the same procedure then there needs to be greater than 5% change in results for there to be a reliable result. If a person is 8% stronger after 6 weeks of strength training then we can safely infer that the change was due to strength training and not random error.

Sensitivity
This factor states that a test should be able to show improvement or regression. For example a test of sprinting needs to measure down to split seconds simply because a lot of distance can be covered in the time period of 1 second. Similarly a 1 rep max test should utilise 0.25 kg weights for it to be sufficiently sensitive in order to demonstrate future improvement or regression.

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