Fitness Vital Signs

As an anesthesiologist I depend on a variety of vital signs to determine the health of the patient I'm caring for.  I never just pick one parameter to measure as an indication of the well being of the patient undergoing surgery.  For example, if I were to rely on only the patient's blood pressure to indicate well being, it is possible I could miss other significant problem areas even though the blood pressure looked great the whole time.

Determining your fitness level is similar. Yet, for many people, they rely on only a few parameters when measuring their fitness level. Some only rely on one parameter; weight. This is a very good parameter to focus on if you are very overweight or very underweight.  However, if you are within a reasonably normal range for weight, it is not very useful at all.  Patting yourself on the back for losing weight, or gaining weight to reach some arbitrary weight goal, is self defeating and at worst, harmful.  

If you are really interested in measuring your fitness level you have to measure several different parameters and then have a way of calculating or interpreting your measurements.  For example, in healthcare, we might measure a patient's blood count.  The lab will dutifully provide you a number.  However, this is meaningless until you have a comparison number from a large population to determine what is "normal" and what is abnormal and furthermore, how abnormal the numbers are.

The Speed Strength Combine is designed to provide each participant feedback on their overall fitness level with a raw number.  However, the scoring system also is designed to provide context for the raw score.  Each event (six of which are scored) is individually scored with a raw number and then given context by supplying a classification.  The labels are listed below from lowest point to highest:

• "Give me a Break"---less than -50 pts.
• "Out of Shape"---- from -50 pts. to -1
• "Untrained"----from 0 pt to 25 pts.
• "novice Athlete"----  from 26 pts. to 59 pts.
• "Athletic" ----from 60 pts. to 99 pts. 
• "Accomplished Athlete" ---- from 100 pts to 150 pts.
• "Advanced Athlete"---from 151 pts. 199 pts.
• "Super Athlete" ---from 200 pts to 250 pts.
• "Elite Athlete"----from 251 pts. 299 pts.
• "Bad Ass"---from 300 pts to 374 pts.
• "Demigod"---- 375 pts and above

   In this way you have feedback as to how you compare against the rest of fitness world.  This gives a full picture of your athleticism and fitness.  So, for example,  if one person is really strong in the bench press, this one event could skew his overall raw score in the combine.  However, the overall classification would weigh equally all of the events.

By measuring 6 events covering both running, agility, and strength, you can get an idea of your overall fitness and how you compare to the rest of the world.    So go ahead and try the six events (there are 8 events but only 6 are used for scoring purposes).  Go to the scoring sheet and enter the data and it will provide you a raw score along with an overall classification label as listed above.  Then come back in 4 to 5 months after some training and try again.  See where you sit. For most average everyday people in this world who consider themselves active but not a collegiate athlete, who have a 9 to 5 job and kids that keeps them busy during the day, striving to achieve greater than 150 points in the combine is a worthy goal and reachable.  Some will have to work harder than others to obtain this level.  However, the scale is designed to look at the general healthy population. It is designed to fit a standard bell curve, however, for the general american population after some training.  This means, that pick any adult male from a generally healthy group of people at random and allow them to train for 12 weeks, the expectation would be that they would most likely find themselves in the middle category (i.e.Acommplished athlete).  With some extra thought and effort they could achieve the category above.  Those who are collegiate level athletes and above naturally, are more likely going to find themselves competing at the Super Athlete and Elite Athlete level with normal training and with aggressive training can attain the "Bad Ass" category.  The scoring system expects very few (top 0.1% of the general american population) to achieve the "Demigod" category, so don't be crushed if that's not you.


So try it out.... go to this link to enter your scores.  see video to understand how it works.