5 Fitness Benchmarks Every Man Should Be Able to Meet

In 1926, physical culturist and strongman Earle Liederman wrote a book entitled Endurance. In it, Liederman says that every man should be physically fit enough to save his own life in an emergency.

According to Liederman: “Every man should be able to save his own life. He should be able to swim far enough, run fast and long enough to save his life in case of emergency and necessity. He also should be able to chin himself a reasonable number of times, as well as to dip a number of times, and he should be able to jump a reasonable height and distance."

Liederman set out five fitness benchmarks that any man possessing adequate fitness should be able to meet:

• Swim a half a mile or more
• Run at top speed two hundred yards or more
• Jump over obstacles waist high or more
• Pull-ups - 15-20+
• Dips - 25+

How to Train to Meet the Five Fitness Benchmarks

If you need some fitness goals to motivate you to train hard, these are good ones since they are functional and have practical value. For any that you can't already do, you will need to train three non-consecutive days a week.  Assuming you fall short in all five, you would set up your training schedule to train pull-ups, dips, and swimming on the same days, and sprinting and jumping on alternate days.

Pull-ups

Test yourself using an overhand grip on the pull-up bar. Be sure you go all the way up and all the way down on each repetition. Divide the number by two, and do three sets of that number with a one minute rest between sets on training days. Aim for three sets of ten.

Dips

Test yourself using either dip bars or do your dips between the backs of two chairs. Be sure to go down to parallel. Take that number and divide by two. Do three sets with that number with one minute rest between sets on training days. Aim for three sets of fifteen. Although dips are supposed to be easier than pull-ups, for some people, correctly performed dips are just as difficult as pull-ups.

Swimming

Test how far you can swim. Let's say it's 400 yards. On training days, do four 100 yard swims with a rest between repetitions approximately equal to the time it takes to swim the distance. Add a lap to each repetition whenever you can. When you can do four repetitions of 225 yards, you should be ready to try a half-mile swim. If you're using a 50 meter Olympic-sized pool, a half mile is 800 meters.

Sprinting

Unless you have been training at sprinting, it's unlikely that you can run 200 yards at top speed. To get there, you need an overdistance day, a race-pace day, and a speed day. On overdistance day, do 2-3 300 yard sprints on a six-minute clock. That means run a 300 every six minutes. Walk between runs. The runs are at 90 percent speed - fast, but not at top speed. Your times should fall between 40-50 seconds. Slower than 50 seconds and you're either not sprinting or your fitness has a lot of room for improvement.

On race-pace day, do 4-8 100 yard sprints at full speed on a three-minute clock. On speed day, do 4-8 50 yard sprints at top speed on a two-minute clock. If you're running your 50s and 100s correctlty, it will take you 20-25 yards to slow down after passing your finish line.

If a running track is available, you can substitute meters for the yard distances. This adds ten percent to the distances. Two hundred meters is almost exactly 220 yards or an eighth of a mile. It's a little surprising that Liederman didn't use that instead of 200 yards for his benchmark. For 300 meter repeats, acceptable times might range from 44-55 seconds 

Jumping

A waist-high barrier is about 39 inches or a meter for the average man. That may sound daunting, but remember that Liederman is not talking about a 39-inch vertical leap from a standstill. He's talking about  getting over a barrier the height of a high school boys' high hurdle with a running start.

To accomplish this, you can use either a scissors high jump or hurdle the barrier. Start with the scissors jump. For those who haven't seen it, this video demonstrates it:



Most people don't have a high jump bar, but you can lay a broomstick or something similar acroos a stack of boxes. Just be certain that whatever set-up you use, there is no possibility of hurting yourself when you miss. Otherwise, you will quickly lose your enthusiasm for practicing jumping.

Each training day, do ten jumps. Start low and keep increasing the height until you miss or do ten jumps. Keep trying the height you missed at until you reach ten jumps. If you reach ten jumps first, start at a higher height next time.

Once you scissor jump a waist-high barrier, you have technically met that benchmark. In the spirit of Liederman's training philosophy, though, you could repeat the procedure with hurdling. If you do that, alternate a scissor jump day with a hurdle day, which means that you would practice each three times every two weeks.

Meeting these five fitness benchmarks should give you a great deal of confidence. Not only are you fit, but you can actually do something useful with your fitness. Most bodybuilders, and even many athletes, can't say that.

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