Open AccessFlexibility assessment: normative values for flexitest from 5 to 91 years of age.
Author(s) -
Cláudio Gil Soares de Araújo
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
pubmed
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.4
H-Index - 53
ISSN - 0066-782X
DOI - 10.1590/s0066-782x2008000400008
Subject(s) - normative , flexibility (engineering) , percentile , medicine , medical prescription , exercise prescription , gerontology , physical therapy , statistics , philosophy , mathematics , epistemology , pharmacology
Physical exercise plays a role in health-promotion policies and its prescription should be scientifically based. Flexibility is one of the major components of health-related and performance-related physical fitness, and is defined as the maximum physiological passive range of motion of a given joint movement. According to its specificity, the assessment of flexibility should, ideally, incorporate multiple movements. Introduced in 1980 and with redesigned evaluation maps published in 1986, Flexitest consists of the assessment of mobility with the use of a scale from 0 to 4. By adding the individual results of the 20 joint movements assessed, it is possible to obtain a global score called Flexindex.