Why are endurance tests done to a metronome?

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peteweez

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I'm kinda curious why the President's Challenge Pushup test and the YMCA Bench Press test have to be done in time with a metronome (a given number of reps per minute). I can understand that it can limit your reps and thus the time needed to take the test by stopping you before you get really fatigued. However, what bothers me about them is that at the beginning, when you have a lot of energy, you have to exercise slower than your natural pace. What's the point of this? For the first ten reps or so in the YMCA bench press test (it tests for reps to fatigue at 80 pounds for men), a pace of 30 reps per minute is painfully slow. Also, I think it makes me perform worse than I could because doing reps at that pace actually fatigues me faster than if I were doing it faster.

OK, I've been rambling for a while, but I'll sum up my question here: why are strength/endurance tests often done to a cadence or a set pace?
 
So that the muscle is working equally on both the concentric and eccentric phase this ensures greater test accuracy as a muscle may fatigue more on a certain type of contraction.

Also for momentum. It is harder to perform exercises under control than it is to use momentum or brute force.
 
Makes Sense

That actually makes a lot of sense! Hehe...I should've been worrying more about form during my training! Thanks.
 
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