Bookending the MovementLink macro workout cycles, we do a series of benchmark functional fitness tests to check-in on our progress and identify blind spots, imbalances, and areas we can work on.
Part of the MovementLink Method is adopting a Growth Mindset and a Challenge is Enhancing Mindset. Testing our fitness and knowing where we stand can be nerve-racking, but really, that just means you care. Everything in life is a journey and nothing is set in stone. If a score is not where you’d like it to be, it’s much better to know the truth, so then you have the ability to choose if you’d like to do something about it, then live in the dark. Benchmark week is not intended to stroke or crush egos. Those who achieve the most success in life prefer to know where they stand because they know if they find a blindspot, that though effort, they can fill in those gaps, making them even better. We want to get excited about finding areas to improve.
What are we event testing?
Our goals are to live in a way that maximizes both our current enjoyment of life and sets us up to continue to have amazing lives at 80 years old and beyond. As it turns out, the best metrics for predicting quality of life at 80 years old are actually the same as what we would want to target if our goals were short-term and focused on functional performance, body composition, tissue and joint health, and overall health and wellness! It is possible to have 100% overlap between methods. Article: The Best Short Game is the Long Game.
To accomplish that, there is a wide range of aspects of fitness we are trying to improve, so the MovementLink Benchmark Week’s workouts test functional strength, power, endurance, muscle stamina, V02 Max, anaerobic thresholds, and mobility along with functional movement skills that have high transfer outside of the gym and into the real world. Because we are advocates of living lives in a way that does not produce the storing of excess body fat, many of our test scores are relative to the individual’s body weight to 1) create a level scoring that can be applied across smaller and larger athletes, but also 2) reward an individual’s reductions of excess body fat.
Like a martial arts belt system, we have color coordinated different fitness levels within each of the tests. Your overall level will be based on the test in which you score the weakest. We are an all-around fitness community, and even if someone scores black on 95% of the tests, if they score blue on a test, they are at blue level until that aspect of their fitness gets brought up. Being at least green in everything is an amazing accomplishment and any level higher is absolutely incredible. Have fun and we hope you learn something that will benefit your life.
Yellow - Our long-term goal is to be able to complete all benchmarks at these minimum, even when we are 80+ years old. In the meantime, we would like to create as much of a buffer past this level as possible.
Orange - A great milestone for people new to having goals that span all areas of fitness to strive for and be ready to continue past. Typically, one-dimensional exercise programs like running, cycling, powerlifting, etc. will excel in specific areas, but will have other areas that will need to be brought up to functional standards.
Green - Achieving green in all areas of functional fitness would mean that someone is incredibly fit and likely will not be reasonably limited by their fitness in anything they want to do in their life.
Blue - Blue is where most people will fall who have been consistent for years with a holistic functional fitness program, 4 or more days a week, with the right mindset and priorities, and quality coaching.
Brown - Someone at the brown level is very advanced.
Black - Someone following MovementLink-type programming 4-6 days a week consistently for 8+ years should be able to achieve black in all categories.
Note: Black level falls well short of the level of professionals in exercise sports like CrossFit, but is well beyond the requirements of maximally enjoying life. Instead of having no ceiling on the performance we are after, there’s a point of negative returns when trying to balance functional performance, body composition, tissue and joint health, and overall health and wellness with using our fitness to live amazing lives. To go way past black level is absolutely achievable, but requires more commitment in the gym, taking on more injury risk, may actually start to be a detriment to tissue and joint health and overall health and wellness, and leave less time to use ones’ fitness in the real world outside of the gym. So, someone can go well beyond MovementLink’s black level, but there will be a trade-off for those additional performance results.
Example:
Scoring for Tuesday’s Bench Press:
For the bench press, we provide two options:
1 rep technical max to test pure maximal strength in the exercise and
5 rep technical max to test muscle endurance and get a good estimate of what a 1 rep max may be.
At each level, where applicable, you will typically see two scores separated by a "/”. The first score is for males and the second score would be for females. You’ll also notice that many scores are relative to your body weight.
So, let’s say you are a female who weighs 140lbs and who’s 5 RTM bench press was 75lbs.
75/140 = 54% of bodyweight. That would put you in the Yellow category, but very close to the next category up, Orange, for your 5 RTM.
Now let’s say you are a female who weighs 140lbs and who’s 5 RTM bench press was 100lbs.
100/140 = 71% of bodyweight. That would put you in the Black category for your 5 RTM.
Recommendation:
It is unlikely that you will complete all 7 days of benchmark week (if you are a member and would like to get in an extra day or more, we can give you a free, temporary, upgrade to an unlimited membership for benchmark week, just let us know).
We highly recommend recording your scores each day with notes by creating a list of the broad fitness categories we are testing (see the list below) and recording your scores, workout notes, and levels to get a better sense of the big picture.
Power
Power is about how fast your body can produce and apply high amounts of force. Power not only has huge transfer into most sports, but power is a correlate to how many fast-twitch muscle fibers you have. As we age or bias too heavily towards endurance training, we tend to lose fast-twitch muscle fibers which are incredibly important for things like being able to catch ourselves if we trip before we fall to the ground.
Tuesday - Max Distance Broad Jump
Wednesday - Max Cadence Air Bike
Wednesday - Lowest 500m Pace on Rower
Saturday - Max Ground-to-Overhead
How to Improve Power?
Power is about producing high forces quickly. Performing exercises like kettlebell swings, cleans, jerks, push press, snatches, and box jumps can improve power…but also may not, it’s up to you. Power requires not only the right exercise, but the right intent when performing the exercise. This is actually why we choose to not take scores all the time in workouts. For example, if you were performing kettlebell swings to get the best score possible in a workout, you may choose a technique that does not maximally explode through the leg and hip drive, like the kettlebell sport people do. But if instead your intent was to get maximal transfer and develop power, you would perform the kettlebell swing with a jumping movement pattern and put max power into every rep…even if putting max power into every rep actually make the workout harder and your score in the workout worse. Another important example would be if you are doing a set of 5 back squats. To ensure you are saving energy for the 4th and 5th rep, you may not put all of your effort into the first rep or two. Instead, to develop power along with strength, put your ego aside and don’t worry about saving anything. Perform each 1 rep with max effort and intent. Teach your brain to fire muscles as fast as possible with good technique.
Strength
Strength is your body’s ability to apply large amounts of force and not only does strength have huge transfer into sports, but functional strength is heavily correlated with not only how long we are going to live, but the quality of that life.
Monday - Back Squat to Box 5 RTM or 1 RTM
Wednesday - Bench Press 5 RTM or 1 RTM
Saturday - Max Ground-to-Overhead
Saturday - Heavy Deadlift / Burpee Workout
How to Improve Strength?
If you are beginner, simply come to classes and these will improve. Beyond that, come to class on Mondays for lower body and Wednesdays for upper body. If you miss one, you can make up the strength portion that week in an open gym time currently on Tuesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, or Sundays.
Strength Endurance
Strength endurance is our ability to apply large amounts of force over a longer time frame. The way to improve strength endurance is through hypertrophy (muscle building) training, so not only is strength endurance beneficial for sport, but is a correlate to muscle mass, another one of our primary indicators of a long and high quality life.
Wednesday - Max Set Strict Pull-ups
Wednesday - 2min AMRAP of Push-ups
Sunday - 300m Farmer’s Carry Test
Saturday - Heavy Deadlift / Burpee Workout
How to Improve Strength Endurance?
Simply come to classes consistently.
VO2 Max and Anaerobic Threshold
VO2 Max and Lactate Threshold, although are measuring very different things, are highly correlated with each other which is why we lump them together here. To put it simply, V02 max is the maximum amount of oxygen your body is able to use during exercise. Lactate thresholds are exceeded when we are exercising at a level in which our body cannot re-use lactate as a fuel at a fast enough level causing lactate to build up in the bloodstream. Oxygen is required for our mitochondria to turn lactate into fuel for us to use, so VO2 Max and our Lactate Thresholds tend do improve together as we improve our abilities in the 5-20-ish minute, max effort time durations. Note: high intensity training is required to improve these areas, but low-intensity Lactate Zone 2 training in addition to high-intensity training can have dramatic benefits when trying to improve this area.
Monday - DB Fran
Tuesday - Triple Threshold
Friday - 1k Row Time Trial
Friday - 2mile Air Bike
Saturday - Heavy Deadlift / Burpee Workout
Sunday - Skills Workout
How to Improve Strength Endurance?
Simply come to classes consistently. Add Tuesdays for Lactate Zone 2 Training.
Functional Endurance and Stamina
Functional endurance is simply about getting a ton of work done on a variety of tasks in a longer-duration workout. We akin this area to the ability to sustain something like yard work. With the capacity to maintain high quality movement across a long-time duration, options open up in our lives.
Thursday - Long and Functional
How to Improve Functional Endurance?
Simply come to classes consistently.
Recoverability
How fast our heart-rate and muscles recover and how capable we are sustaining effort across multiple high-intensity bouts is a valuable adaptation to have and gets better and better with fitness and exposure to this type of training. Most sports are played at high-intensities with a lot of rest intervals.
Tuesday - Triple Threshold
Friday - 1k Row Time Trial and 2mile Air Bike
Saturday - Heavy Deadlift / Burpee Workout
How to Improve Recoverability?
Simply come to classes consistently.
Functional Skills
Skills are developed with practice. If you spend time practicing the movement patterns of these exercises, scores can improve dramatically.
Monday - DB Fran
Saturday - Max Ground-to-Overhead
Sunday - Max Handstand Hold
Sunday - Skills Workout
Double Unders
Toes-to-bars
Muscle-ups
How to Improve the Functional Skills you Care About?
Simply come to classes consistently to be exposed to proper tehcnique in these skills and add a bit of practice. You can show up a hair early and use 5-10 minutes before class to practice a skill you’re interested in. Done consistently over a month or two will generate incredible progress. Want to go even deeper? Check out the MovementLink.FIT exercise page to get tips on developing the skills you’re interested in and/or work with one of our coaches in a skills personal training session.
The Benchmark Workouts
See each individual workout below for description and scoring levels:
A final note about anxiety that can come from testing and scores.
Your fitness on any given day can be quite dramatically different. Not only are there are a ton of things that can impact your score up and down on any given day, but the more beginner you are the more you can expect bigger gains.
As we get more advanced, we tend to identify more with the level we think we should be at, which produces a lot more anxiety. Try to put less pressure on your exact scores. Give each test your all, but the difference of being at the high end of a level or the low end of the next level up is basically the same score and the same level. Remember, we made up the levels and coming up with the exact points where it tips from one to the other is particularly less important than generally where you are. The same goes for comparing a score from last benchmark week that is slightly lower or higher. Yes, we want to learn from every score and try to identify any factors that may have contributed to it, but anything near the last result or higher is great. Now, if there is a negative or stagnated trend across a few benchmark weeks, then we want to investigate. We want to use our levels as a guide us over time, so trends are more important than single efforts.
Other things to track that we find beneficial:
Body Composition with something like a DEXA scan.
Health metrics via blood work through your doctor or a company like InsideTracker.