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Athlete Testing · Methodology

How we built our testing standards

Our standards are built on published research wherever it exists, and we label every place it doesn't. This page explains which tests we use, what each score is compared against, where the research is strong and where it's thin, and how we'll keep improving the standards.

Standards version 5 · September 2026

51tests across six age groups
380standards, each specific to age and sex
65references cited, 24 of them from 2023–2026
5versions, from first draft to the one in use today

1. Why we test

Fitness in childhood and adolescence is a powerful marker of current and future health[1]. For athletes, testing turns “work hard” into specifics: it shows each athlete what they already do well and what to train next, and it tracks progress over months and years.

Our approach follows long-term athletic development: build movement quality and a broad base of athletic skills early, with age-appropriate strength work throughout, and add more demanding speed, power and strength tests as athletes mature[2,3]. That's why each age group has its own set of tests, and why testing for ages 6–59 starts with a movement screen. (For ages 60 and over, the Senior Fitness Test has its own safety checks.)

2. What we test at each age

GroupAgesTests
Foundation6–11Movement screen, sprint mechanics (coach rating), 10-yd sprint, standing broad jump, plank, single-leg balance
Build12–14Movement screen, 10-yd sprint, pro agility (5-10-5), broad jump, vertical jump, push-ups (60 s), plank
Develop15–18Movement screen, 10/20-yd sprint (40-yd for speed positions), pro agility, 3-cone drill, broad and vertical jump, push-ups, pull-ups, trap-bar deadlift (3-rep max, per body weight), reactive strength (when a contact mat is available)
Perform19–24The 15–18 tests, plus up to two sport modules: football, wrestling, soccer, lacrosse, basketball, baseball/softball or volleyball
Fitness for Life25–59Movement screen, push-ups, plank, dead hang, single-leg balance (eyes closed), sit-and-rise. A light broad jump and a 5-minute cardio effort are recorded but not scored (see section 5).
Sustain60+The Senior Fitness Test (30-s chair stand, 30-s arm curl, 2-minute step, chair sit-and-reach, back scratch, 8-ft up-and-go) plus single-leg balance[4,5]

Every group also has height and body weight measured on each test day. These are recorded to track growth and to score strength relative to body weight, but they are never scored. Age groups are based on age on test day. Ages 6–14 have a separate standard for every year of age; older groups use the group standard, or 10-year and 5-year bands for adults (section 4).

3. How a score works

Every result gets a score from 1 to 5:

  1. 1 Needs work
  2. 2 Developing
  3. 3 At standard
  4. 4 Above standard
  5. 5 Elite

Each test has four cut points for each age and sex. An athlete's score is 1 plus the number of cut points they reach. Wherever researchers have published percentiles, the four cut points are the 20th, 40th, 60th and 80th percentiles of the comparison group. In plain terms, the score says which fifth of that group the athlete falls in: a 3 is the middle fifth, and a 5 is the top fifth. (Men aged 19–24 are the one exception; section 4 explains how their cut points are set.)

Example: standing broad jump, 10-year-old boy

Cut points of 48, 53, 58 and 63 inches come from 1.35 million European children's jumps[6]. A 55-inch jump clears two of them, so it scores a 3 (At standard). A 60-inch jump scores a 4.

Reports group results into five categories: speed, agility, power, strength and endurance, and movement. The athlete's two lowest-scoring tests become their focus areas, each matched with coach-approved workouts they can do at home. Coming later: a peer score on the same five-level scale, comparing athletes with other Level Up athletes of the same group and sex. It will appear only once at least 15 athletes can be compared.

4. Who a “3” is compared with

A score is only as meaningful as the comparison group behind it. We chose the most relevant large, recent data set we could find for each age group.

AgesCompared withMain sources
6–14Children of the same age and sex in the general populationEuropean FitBack norms, nearly 8 million test results including 1.35 million broad jumps[6]; youth sprint norms[7,8]; vertical jump[9]; plank[10]; push-up health standards and award benchmarks[11,12]
15–18 boysHigh-school athletes: 7,478 high-school football players tested at combines with electronic timing, using the linebacker / defensive end / tight end percentiles as a middle-of-the-pack athletic reference (faster than linemen, slower than defensive backs)McKay et al. 2020 (two papers)[13,14]
15–18 girlsHigh-school and college women athletesViramontes 2024; Guthrie 2021; Alfaro 2024; Wright 2025; McFarland 2016; Zaragoza 2021[16–21]
19–24Men: Cut 1–3 are estimated 20th, 50th and 80th percentiles of all high-school football combine players (calculated from published averages and spreads); “Elite” is anchored near the NFL Combine median for linebackers, tight ends and edge rushers. So for men 19–24, a score shows where an athlete sits between a typical high-school player and a pro prospect, not which fifth of a group they fall in. No 19–24 cut is easier than the 15–18 cut on the same test: where the published data set a lower bar, we use the 15–18 value, so an adult never outscores a high-school athlete with the same result. Women: college athletes. Sport modules: athletes of the same sport, by competition level.Gillen 2019; NFL Combine 2019–2026 (the 2021 event was cancelled); Guthrie 2021; Zaragoza 2021; McFarland 2016[15,17,20–22]. Sport-module sources are in the appendix.
25–59Adults of the same sex, scored in age bands (25–29, 30–39, 40–49, 50–59). Some sources use wider bands, and plank values for ages 36–59 are estimated between younger- and older-adult data.Canadian national push-up norms[23]; balance[24]; sit-and-rise[25,26]; plank[27,28]
60+US community-dwelling older adults in 5-year bands (60–64 through 90–94)Senior Fitness Test national norms[4,5], checked against a 2024 international review[29]

A heads-up for families of 14-year-olds. At 15 the comparison changes from “all kids your age” to “high-school athletes.” Many athletes' scores drop one to three levels that year, most of all on jumps, even when they have improved. Reports for 15-year-olds explain this, and the raw results (times, distances, reps) always show the real progress.

5. Where the research is thin, and how we filled the gaps

No research group has published norms for every test, age and sex we use. When the data were incomplete, we used the next-best method, recorded which one we used for every standard, and labeled each standard's confidence:

  • Published percentiles: used as-is (e.g. youth broad jump, high-school combine tests, Senior Fitness Test).
  • Only an average and spread published: we estimated the 20th–80th percentiles with a standard bell-curve calculation. Balance times are lopsided (many short holds, a few very long ones), so they use a log-normal curve instead.
  • Levels published instead of percentiles: cut points sit at those levels. For example, wrestling throw counts for 2nd-league, 1st-league and national-team wrestlers[30], Yo-Yo test distances for amateur and semi-professional soccer players and published performance tiers in women's soccer[31–33], and the sit-and-rise score groups tied to long-term health outcomes in adults aged 46 and over[26].
  • No norms for our exact test: we derived standards from the closest published data and wrote down the assumption. Examples: youth 10-yard times from 20-meter sprint norms[7,8]; youth pro-agility times from high-school data scaled by European age trends[34]; the women's 95-lb bench test from published college women's maximum bench presses[17,35] using a standard strength formula[36].
  • No usable research: coach estimate, marked low confidence (movement screen, dead hang, weighted pull-up and a few sport tests). These are the first standards we'll replace with our own data.
  • Not scored at all when a score would look more precise than it is: the 5-minute cardio effort (we found no published norms for a 5-minute distance on any machine; we may replace it with a test whose estimated aerobic fitness can be compared with US national fitness percentiles[37]), the adult light broad jump (the test is valid in adults, but results jump by several inches between a first and second try, and we found no suitable adult norms[38]), and eyes-open balance for ages 25–59 (most healthy younger adults reach the 45-second limit[24]). We still record these results so we can track change over time.
127 High66 Medium162 Low

High: straight from large published norms that match our protocol. Medium: published data, but a smaller sample, an estimated percentile, or a close-but-not-identical protocol. Low: derived, blended or estimated. Low doesn't mean wrong; it means our own data will improve it first.

6. How tests are run (it matters as much as the numbers)

A standard only applies if the test is run the same way as in the research behind it. Our written testing procedures lock in the following:

  • Electronic timing for sprints and agility (ages 15+). In a study of trained timers, individual stopwatch times typically differed from electronic times by up to about a quarter of a second either way[39]. That's larger than the gap between two score levels on a 10-yard sprint, so we use timing gates or a validated phone app[40]. Every result records the timing method, and the start position is fixed for each age group (a three-point start for ages 15–18, matching the high-school research).
  • Jumps. The broad jump uses a two-foot takeoff, best of two tries, measured to the back heel[41]. The vertical jump uses an arm swing and reach, recorded as jump height (reach minus standing reach), which matches the high-school, college and NBA data[13,42]. Youth vertical norms were measured with hands on the waist, so we adjusted them for arm swing[43,44]. That adjustment is labeled low confidence and will be re-checked with our own results.
  • Strength relative to body weight. The trap-bar deadlift and hang clean are scored per pound of body weight, so athletes are weighed on test day. The hang clean is tested only after a coach signs off on technique; an athlete who isn't cleared shows “not tested,” never a zero.
  • Left and right sides. On one-side tests we score the weaker side and report the gap between sides. Grip strength is the exception: we score the better hand, as the published norms do[45].
  • Test-specific rules come from the source studies: wrestling throws are 3 × 30 seconds with 20 seconds of rest[30]; reactive strength uses our standard 30-cm (12-inch) drop and the “as high and as fast as possible” cue used across the research[46]; adult women do push-ups from the knees, as in the Canadian norms[23]; adult balance is eyes closed, arms crossed, with a 45-second cap[24]; and the 6–11 balance cap is 60 seconds, because many children reach a 30-second limit and keep improving well past it[47,48].
  • Consistency. Coaches are trained on our written testing procedure and use the same setup every time. Small day-to-day differences are normal in any test, so we look at trends across test days rather than any single result[49].

7. Health flags, not diagnoses

Two adult tests are linked to long-term health in large studies. Participants aged 60 and over who can't stand on one leg for 10 seconds get a note on their report: in a study of 1,702 adults aged 51–75, those who couldn't had higher mortality over about seven years[50]. The sit-and-rise score groups are also linked to long-term outcomes in adults aged 46 and over[26]; we report that score but don't flag it. A health flag is a prompt to talk with a healthcare provider. Level Up testing is a fitness assessment, not a medical exam.

8. How the standards were developed

  1. May 2026: coaching thresholds. Our first testing batteries used Low and High targets set by Level Up coaches.
  2. Version 1: a complete draft. Four cut points for every test, age and sex, combining the coaching targets with published norms.
  3. Version 2: literature review. Every standard was checked against published research, with priority on studies from 2023–2026, and every standard now cites its source. Many early targets turned out to be too hard: they were set for hand timing and for strong athletes, so typical athletes would have scored 1s and 2s.
  4. Version 3: independent second review. We re-checked the key sources, flagged the weakest assumptions, and decided which tests should be recorded but not scored.
  5. Version 4: better high-school data. Full percentile tables for 7,478 high-school players[13,14] replaced earlier estimates for boys 15–18.
  6. Version 5 (current). We set record-only rules, locked in the test procedures above, added a 95-lb bench test for women, and added the 60+ balance health flag. Level Up's leadership approved this version in September 2026, and it powers our testing app.

9. What's next

  • Our own norms. Once 50 or more Level Up athletes in an age group and sex have completed a test, we'll replace low-confidence standards with our own 20th/40th/60th/80th percentiles.
  • An annual review. Each year we'll check the standards against new research and our own results. Every change is versioned and dated.
  • Long-term research. With family consent and names removed, we're studying how attendance and effort relate to improvement over time.

Limits we want you to know about

  • Most large youth norms come from Europe and Latin America[6,8–10]. Comparable recent US data don't exist yet.
  • The high-school boys' reference is football players, and research on women athletes uses much smaller samples.
  • Kids mature at different rates. A score describes where an athlete is today, not their potential[2].

Questions about testing? Email coaches@lvlupathletics.org.

Appendix: sources by test
TestAgesSourcesConfidence
Movement screen (0–15)6–59Coach estimate; adult screen context[51]Low
Sprint mechanics (coach rating)6–11Level Up coaching rubric (the rating is the score)Coach rating (no norms)
10-yd sprint6–24PROESP-Br; Dueñas-Dorado 2026; McKay 2020; Zaragoza 2021; Viramontes 2024[7,8,14,16,21]Low (6–14); High (boys 15–18)
20- and 40-yd sprint15–24McKay 2020; Gillen 2019; NFL Combine; Alfaro 2024[13–15,18,22]High (boys 15–18); Medium–Low
Standing broad jump6–24FitBack (Ortega 2023); McKay 2020; Gillen 2019; NFL Combine; Guthrie 2021[6,13,15,17,22]High (6–14, boys 15–18); Medium–Low
Vertical jump12–24FUPRECOL (Ramírez-Vélez 2017); arm-swing studies; McKay 2020; NFL Combine; Guthrie 2021[9,13,17,22,43,44]Low (12–14, girls 15–18); High (boys 15–18); Medium (19–24)
Pro agility (5-10-5), 3-cone12–24McKay 2020; Eurofit (Tomkinson 2018); McFarland 2016; Wright 2025; NFL Combine[13,14,19,20,22,34]Low (12–14); High (boys 15–18); Medium–Low
Plank6–59CAPL-2 (Patiño-Palma 2026); Presidential benchmarks; Strand 2014; Bohannon 2018[10,12,27,28]Medium / Low
Push-ups12–59FitnessGram; Presidential benchmarks; Canadian norms (Payne 2000)[11,12,23]Low (12–24); Medium (adults)
Pull-ups15–24Award benchmarks[12] + coach estimateLow
Trap-bar deadlift (per body weight)15–24Alfaro 2024; Tramel 2019[18,52]Low
Reactive strength index15–24Jarvis 2022 review (estimate within the published range); Lu 2026 as context[46,53]Low
Football: hang clean, 225/95-lb bench, 10-yd split19–24NFL Combine; Guthrie 2021; Horvat 2003; Epley formula; small studies used as context only (Xie 2025; Hayashi 2021; Stahl 2019)[17,22,35,36,54–56]Low / Medium
Wrestling: grip, throws, 90-second burpees (3-minute norms scaled to 90 seconds, an assumption), weighted pull-up19–24Tomkinson 2025 grip norms; Catanzano 2025; Marković 2022; Podstawski 2019[30,45,57,58]High (grip); Medium–Low
Soccer: single-leg hop, repeated sprints, Yo-Yo test19–24Myers 2014; McFarland 2016; Asimakidis 2025; Işıkdemir 2026; Hörnlund 2024; Georgiadis 2025; Martín-Moya 2023; Compton 2026[20,31–33,59–62]Medium / Low
Lacrosse: 505 agility, grip, 300-yd shuttle19–24Martín-Moya 2023; Compton 2026; Tomkinson 2025; Zaragoza 2021; Alfaro 2024[18,21,32,33,45]Medium / Low (grip High)
Basketball: verticals, lane agility, ¾-court sprint19–24NBA Draft Combine 2026; Zaragoza 2021[21,42]Low / Medium
Baseball/softball: med-ball throw, 60-yd, home-to-first19–24Topendsports; NCSA recruiting guidelines (not peer-reviewed; best available)[63,64]Low
Volleyball: block and approach jump, T-test (T-test values borrowed from soccer players)19–24Tramel 2019; Guthrie 2021; Chattanta 2024[17,52,65]Low / Medium
Single-leg balance6–11, 25+Condon 2014; Darr 2025; Springer 2007; Araujo 2022[24,47,48,50]Low (6–11); Medium
Sit-and-rise25–59Araújo 2020, 2026[25,26]High / Medium
Dead hang25–59No published norms; coach estimate (grip norms as a check[45])Low
Senior Fitness Test (6 items)60+Rikli & Jones 1999, 2013; Cossio-Bolaños 2024[4,5,29]High

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