It’s the time of year when we start to get all the ridiculous, “Get a Bathing Suit Body For the Summer,” articles. I am constantly amazed that this crap gets re-cycled every year in magazines, newspapers and television shows. The same weight loss based garbage every year. I cannot believe editors keep asking for these stories and writers keep churning them out. And people pay attention to them.

In general, weight loss goals are a bad idea. “Weighing less” is meaningless. Making a short-term effort to lose 15-pounds by Memorial Day, even if you do it, will usually be worse for you in the long run, and doesn’t even mean that you will look better.

Set a goal of improving performance of a given task by the time you have to get into your bathing suit rather than focusing on weight or appearance. If you can’t do a push-up, make a concerted effort to do a push-up. And if you can do 5, work to be able to do 10. The same goes with just about any other exercise, especially the ones you avoid because you can’t do them or because they are “too hard.”

Pursuing these performance-based goals will give you the best chance to appreciably change your look while improving your fitness and capability level. Over a 6-8 week period if you work diligently to improve your performance you WILL look better.

The catch is you have to work hard at things that are hard to do; 60-yard shuttles, squats, jump rope, push-ups, pull-ups. In my experience these are all activities that most people avoid because of their degree of difficulty, but at the same time represent the opportunity give a person the chance to truly improve. Weight loss doesn’t represent improvement, but learning how to do pull-ups or any of these other meaningful tasks – genuinely trying – is the definition of improvement.

And even if you don’t reach your goal, whether it’s doing a pull-up, a push-up, completing five 60-yard shuttles in a given period of time, you will have improved your performance and will NOT have failed. People who set out to lose weight, and don’t, or do and gain it back, always feel like they have failed.

Level 2 of the HealthAndFitnessAdvice.com Conditioning Gauntlet can serve as a real challenge for even the fittest women.

Last month I posted an item detailing the first level of a conditioning test that I use with both my athletes and regular clients. If you’ve tried it and aced it, or looked at it and thought it was too easy for you, level 2 of the gauntlet is worth of your consideration.

Regular visitors to the site should know I don’t believe in using the scale as a measure of a person’s fitness and don’t care how much someone weighs. Weight loss is a bogus way to measure “improvements” in a person’s fitness level.

For professional or college athletes, competitive weekend warriors or gym rats performance and capability is what rules the day and is all that matters when measuring the success of a fitness program.

The “Conditioning Gauntlet” I use with my clients and kids on my team is split into 2 sections; the section one consists of pull-ups, push-ups, sit-ups, 60-yard shuttle runs and the broad jump, the section two consists of the split jerk, squat, military press, dead lift and snatch.

I use different guidelines for men and women, and there are 2 levels for each section that reflect difficulty and conditioning level.

Here’s level 2 of the HealthAndFitnessAdvice.com Conditioning Gauntlet for women.

• Pull-ups – 1 set of 7 repetitions
• Push-ups – 1 set of 40 repetitions
• Sit-ups – 1 set of 65 repetitions
• Broad jump – 7 feet, 8 inches (best of 3 jumps)
• 60-yard shuttle runs – complete 12 in 14 seconds (or under) each taking 46 seconds rest in between shuttles

No doubt about it, if you are able to perform any of these tasks you are in very good shape.  However, anyone woman, of any age, who can complete these tasks consecutively, is in phenomenal shape, and can be considered a stud!

If you’ve taken a shot at the first level you know how you need to prepare; allow plenty of time for a general warm up, do an abbreviated set of each “event” and give yourself no more than 3-minutes in between exercises.

And please do not try to complete this test if you haven’t completed the first level of the gauntlet and until you have actually worked on these events.  The shuttle runs aren’t for newbies – even for people who do regular cardiovascular exercise.  Unless you’ve worked on running full-effort shuttles you should not try this test.

The HealthAndFitnessAdvice.com Conditioning Gauntlet provides an accurate measure of your fitness level and if you can complete this test – regardless of what the scale says – you are in top-level shape.