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What's a good VO2 max for my age?

By GyroscopeUpdated November 14, 20265 sources

Aim for the top half of your decade, then hold your number as you age. The US middle falls from about 47 for men and 37 for women in their 20s to 25 and 20 in their 60s.

Most people judge their number against who they were at 25, or against one “good” number they saw online. Both make a healthy 55-year-old feel like he’s slipping. A man of 55 at 33 is above the middle for his age, at about the 65th percentile, even though 33 would put a man in his 20s in the bottom fifth.

We’d compare only with your own decade, and count a number that holds flat for ten years as a climb.

The middle, decade by decade

The US chart, FRIEND 2022, comes from 16,278 lab treadmill tests in healthy adults. The table shows its middle values in ml/kg/min.

The middle drops about 13.5 percent, or 4 points, every decade. These are typical values, and the Gyroscope app personalizes yours.

Hold still and you climb

Because the chart falls, a number that stays put rises through the ranks. A man at 42 sits at about the 73rd percentile in his 40s, the 87th in his 50s and above the 90th from 60. A woman at 30 goes from the 56th percentile in her 30s to the 70th in her 40s, the 84th in her 50s and above the 90th in her 60s. Drag the age in the chart below and watch it happen.

The five Dallas men show the other side. Tested at 20 in 1966, they were at 43, about the 38th percentile for their age. At 50 they’d fallen to 31, yet that put them at the 57th percentile for men in their 50s. The chart had fallen faster than they had.

Why it falls faster later

Researchers in Baltimore retested 810 healthy adults aged 21 to 87 over a median of 7.9 years. VO2 max fell 3 to 6 percent a decade in the 20s and 30s, and more than 20 percent a decade in the 70s and beyond. It fell faster in men from the 40s on, and at every level of leisure activity. Max heart rate fell only 4 to 6 percent a decade, so most of the loss came from the oxygen the body used with each heartbeat.

Canadian physiologist Roy Shephard put the point where losing your independence becomes likely at about 18 for men and 15 for women, usually reached at 80 to 85. The US middle for people in their 80s is 17.6 for men and 15.4 for women, right on that line.

Holding it is possible

In Trondheim, Norway, 1,567 people aged 70 to 77 trained twice a week for five years. The researchers expected a fall of at least 3.5 points. None of the three groups lost fitness, and the group doing intervals ended 0.7 points higher than the others.

Find your own spot with where you stand, and see how to raise it after 50.