ABSTRACT
Fitness testing athletes provides practitioners with an objective method of monitoring changes in specific fitness qualities over time. The specific fitness qualities of interest should be based on a needs analysis of the athletes’ sport and position. Fitness testing should, ideally, initially take place on two separate occasions at the beginning of the pre-season training cycle to provide baseline fitness data and associated measurement error. Subsequent fitness testing sessions will vary across sports, but generally practitioners should at least aim to test athletes at the end of the pre-season training cycle and again within the competitive season to monitor associated performance changes. Ideally, the gold standard equipment for testing a particular fitness quality should be used where possible, or validated alternatives when this is impossible or unrealistic. Additionally, it is important to standardise all testing protocols as this will affect the reliability, variability and comparability of the data collected. The order of testing will be dictated by factors such time/equipment availability and the number athletes being tested, but generally measurements of height, mass, body composition and range of motion would be performed first, followed by skill- and/or speed-based tests (jumps, change of direction/agility and sprints), then maximal strength tests (dynamic or isometric) and finally muscular endurance and/or aerobic capacity tests. If a ‘round-robin’ approach to fitness testing is necessary, then the testing order for each athlete should remain the same in subsequent testing sessions and, ideally, the muscular endurance and/or aerobic capacity tests should be performed last by all athletes. The way in which data is analysed will greatly influence the accuracy, reliability and variability of the results, thus the criterion method of analysing each dataset should applied.
