FitnessGram Test Battery

FitnessGram is a school-based youth fitness assessment system developed by the Cooper Institute. Official reports use criterion-referenced Healthy Fitness Zones. The four pages collected here instead show peer-percentile distributions from named research studies, so their values should not be substituted for current FitnessGram standards.

Developed by
The Cooper Institute (Dallas, Texas)
First published
Introduced in 1982; protocols and software have continued to evolve
Target population
Children and adolescents (FitnessGram targets ages 5-17; Santos 2014 norms cover ages 10-18)
Total tests
A menu of aerobic-capacity, body-composition, muscular-endurance, strength, and flexibility assessments
Norms available here
Four longstanding field assessments: international 20m shuttle-run norms labelled PACER (ages 9-17), plus Portuguese push-up, curl-up, and back-saver sit-and-reach norms (ages 10-18)

Purpose

FitnessGram is intended for health-related fitness education and monitoring, not athletic ranking. Its Healthy Fitness Zones are criterion-referenced standards maintained by the programme. Percentiles answer a different question: where a score falls in a particular research distribution. A percentile is not evidence that a student is inside or outside an HFZ.

The pages below do not share one cohort. PACER values are international 20m shuttle-run centiles standardised from 177 studies. Push-up, curl-up, and back-saver sit-and-reach values come from one nationally representative Portuguese study using FITNESSGRAM v8.0. Each page documents protocol differences that affect comparison with current administration.

FitnessGram percentile pages on this site

TestMeasuresAgesSource
PACER (20m Shuttle Run) Cardiorespiratory endurance 9-17 Tomkinson 2017 (International 20mSRT)
Push-Ups Upper-body muscular endurance 10-18 Santos et al. 2014 (FitnessGram)
Curl-Up (FitnessGram) Abdominal muscular endurance 10-18 Santos et al. 2014 (FitnessGram)
Back-Saver Sit-and-Reach Hamstring and lower-back flexibility 10-18 Santos et al. 2014 (FitnessGram)

Administration

Use the current FitnessGram administration manual, cadence files, and local policy when conducting an official assessment. The outline below is a practical sequence, not a substitute for those instructions:

  1. Back-saver sit-and-reach (before vigorous activity, while muscles are cold or only lightly warmed up)
  2. Curl-ups
  3. Trunk lift
  4. Push-ups
  5. PACER (performed last; most aerobically demanding)

Test order, permitted alternatives, stopping rules, and maximum scores can change by programme version or jurisdiction. In particular, raw results should only be compared with a reference page when the tested protocol matches the source notes on that page.

Who is it for?

FitnessGram is designed for school-based assessment of children and adolescents. Equipment depends on the chosen assessments and includes the official cadence or PACER audio, marked courses, mats, and measurement equipment. Administrators should use the programme's current protocol resources rather than reconstruct a test from percentile tables.

Current users can obtain protocol videos, cadences, scoresheets, and standards through the FitnessGram SmartCoach resources.

A note on trunk lift norms

FitnessNorms has not located a suitable published age- and sex-specific percentile distribution for the FitnessGram trunk lift. Current FitnessGram scoring also has a 12-inch maximum. This site therefore does not infer a percentile distribution from the programme's criterion zones.

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