Reaching Goals: Fitness Assessments Helpful For Workout Routines

By Christie Netherton
Messenger-Inquirer
Oct 24, 2021

Fitness assessments at the Owensboro Health Healthpark are geared toward helping new members set and obtain health and fitness goals. According to Jason Anderson, manager of the Healthpark’s health and fitness, any new member has the opportunity to receive a fitness assessment which tests various aspects of an individual’s physical fitness, including resting heart rate, resting blood pressure, height and weight, calculated body mass index number, body composition, strength, flexibility, among other things.

The purpose, Anderson said, is not to tell a person what they are doing wrong, but to curate a workout routine that is specific to that person and their fitness goals

“Most people who are joining the Healthpark are joining for reasons including their fitness and that looks like a lot of different things, like losing weight, gaining weight, becoming more fit,” he said. “A lot of times, people don’t know how to get there, exactly, so by offering them that opportunity to do a fitness assessment, we can develop a specific exercise prescription for them to reach the goals that they have for fitness.”

Assessments, which are performed by fitness coaches trained in sports medicine, can also be curated to an individuals unique needs, Anderson said, such as if they have back or knee problems or are unable to lift heavy objects.

“We adapt that testing protocol to the individual that we’re working with because, as you can imagine, people come to us that have no limitations whatsoever and are completely fine to do any and everything,” he said. But we also have people that come to us that may have orthopedic issues, knee problems, back problems, that we have to work around, so sometimes we’ll customize that fitness assessment based on what that person needs.”

Once a fitness assessment is performed, he said, the fitness coach will come up with an exercise prescription that will help the individual reach their goals and will walk them through the routine, exercise by exercise, showing them how to use machines and how much weight to lift.

The biggest priority, Anderson said, is safety.
“We want to make sure that people are safe. Doing this assessment will show areas of strength and areas of weakness, where to work on, but a lot of people, when they step into a fitness center, especially if they haven’t been infor a long time, it can be very intimidating,” he said. “By doing this .. we are showing them how to exercise safely, how to exercise effectively, and hopefully minimize unjust risk while they’re exercising.”

The whole purpose, he said, is to ensure people come into the facility and are able to reach their goals with accessible help and advice from trained individuals.

Some, he said, choose not to undergo the fitness assessment, possibly due to embarrassment, but the objective is not
to shame anyone, but to help them along in their fitness journey and show them how far they have come along the way.

“The reason that we do that fitness assessment is not so that we can shake our finger at you and say, ‘boy, you’re really bad at this or you’re good at this,’ but the reason we do that assessment is to get a basic measurement of where that individual is,” he said.

Christie Netherton, cnetherton@messenger-inquirer.com, 270-691-7360