What's a good VO2 max for a man?
Above the middle for your decade is good, which is about 47 in your 20s, 40 in your 30s, 35 in your 40s, 29 in your 50s and 25 in your 60s. The top quarter starts about 6 to 9 points higher.
Men tend to measure themselves against the numbers they hear about, which belong to pro cyclists and skiers in the 90s. Then a Garmin calls their 41 “Fair”, and they assume they’re ordinary. Garmin’s labels come from The Cooper Institute’s data, where Fair for a man in his 40s means the 40th to 60th percentile. On the current US chart, the same 41 is at about the 70th percentile, close to the top quarter.
We’d aim for the top half of your decade, push for the top quarter if you train, and then hold it. In the Cleveland Clinic study of 122,007 treadmill tests, the researchers found no level where more fitness stopped going with lower risk.
The men’s chart
The table comes from the US FRIEND chart, built on lab treadmill tests of 9,564 healthy men, in ml/kg/min. “Low” is the bottom quarter, and the other columns show where each group starts.
| Age | Below average from | Above average from | High from | Top 10 percent from |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20s | 37.6 | 46.5 | 53.2 | 58.6 |
| 30s | 31.7 | 39.7 | 48.2 | 55.5 |
| 40s | 28.2 | 35.3 | 43.1 | 50.8 |
| 50s | 23.4 | 29.2 | 36.3 | 43.4 |
| 60s | 19.6 | 24.6 | 30.4 | 37.1 |
| 70s | 16.6 | 20.6 | 24.9 | 29.4 |
| 80s | 15.5 | 17.6 | 20.7 | 22.8 |
The 25th and 75th percentile columns are drawn on straight lines between FRIEND’s published tenths. These are typical ranges, and the Gyroscope app personalizes yours.
Men lose it faster
In Baltimore, researchers retested 435 men and 375 women over a median of 7.9 years. From the 40s on, the men’s VO2 max fell faster than the women’s in every decade, and by the 70s both were losing more than 20 percent a decade.
The Dallas five
In 1966, five healthy 20-year-old men in Dallas spent three weeks in bed for a study, then trained. They started at 43, which was only about the 38th percentile for men in their 20s. Thirty years later they weighed 100 kg (220 lb) instead of 77 and had fallen to 31, yet that put them at the 57th percentile for men in their 50s.
Then they trained for six months. Their oxygen use came all the way back to the 3.3 liters a minute they’d had at 20, and per kilogram they reached 36, about the 74th percentile for their age. At 50 they ranked higher than they had at 20.
Where to go next
See is 42 a good VO2 max? for one number across every decade, or put yours in the tool below for your percentile, group and fitness age. To move up a group, start with how do I increase my VO2 max?
What your result means, and what to do next
- Low or below average. Most of the health gap sits in the first step up, so this is where training pays the most.
- Above average or high. Hold it as the years pass. Holding steady after 40 already counts as climbing.
- The next group up is a target for one training block, but people respond very differently, from almost nothing to a lot.
- Make sure the number is real. A watch can be several points off. Get your true VO2 max
- Start the two layers. Cardio most days at a pace where you can still talk, and one or two hard sessions a week. How to raise it
- Retest the same way in 8 to 12 weeks. Same test, same route or same watch. Believe a change of more than 2 to 4 points.
6 sources
- Kaminsky LA and others, Updated reference standards for cardiorespiratory fitness measured with cardiopulmonary exercise testing (FRIEND), Mayo Clinic Proceedings, 2022mayoclinicproceedings.org
- Mandsager K and others, Association of Cardiorespiratory Fitness With Long-term Mortality Among Adults Undergoing Exercise Treadmill Testing, JAMA Network Open, 2018pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Fleg JL and others, Accelerated longitudinal decline of aerobic capacity in healthy older adults, Circulation, 2005europepmc.org
- McGuire DK and others, A 30-year follow-up of the Dallas Bedrest and Training Study: I. Effect of age on the cardiovascular response to exercise, Circulation, 2001europepmc.org
- McGuire DK and others, A 30-year follow-up of the Dallas Bedrest and Training Study: II. Effect of age on cardiovascular adaptation to exercise training, Circulation, 2001europepmc.org
- Garmin, Forerunner 265 Owner's Manual, VO2 Max. Standard Ratings (data from The Cooper Institute), checked 2026-11-14www8.garmin.com
