Where do you stand?
Your number on the US chart for your age and sex: your percentile, your group and your fitness age, how far the next group is, and what happens to your rank when you hold your number and the years pass.
Fitness age
45Your age
32Fitness age
VO2 max 42, on the FRIEND 2022 treadmill tests
73thpercentile
42 is about the 73rd percentile for men in their 40s, so you have the engine of a 32-year-old. Group: above average
Straight lines between the published deciles, our arithmetic. The table stops at the 10th and 90th.
The next group up
Hold it and climb
Keep your number, move your birthday. The chart falls every decade, so the same number ranks higher.
42 at 55 would be about the 87th percentile for men in their 50s.
What one group up has gone with
In 122,007 adults sent for a treadmill test at the Cleveland Clinic, followed for a median 8.4 years, the risk of death compared group by group:
Comparisons between groups in one observational study of people sent for a stress test, with fitness estimated from the treadmill stage, not measured with a mask. They show what fitness has gone with, not what changing yours will do. The elite group, the top 2 percent, sits past where the US chart stops, so we never place anyone in it. Years of life are lifespan.guide's subject: see what it means in years.
The whole climb
16,278 treadmill and 6,101 bike tests from 34 US labs. Bike numbers run lower for the same fitness, so a bike test is ranked on the bike table.
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.
How it's worked out
The chart is FRIEND 2022: 22,379 lab tests with a mask from 34 US labs, apparently healthy adults aged 20 to 89, published as the 10th to 90th percentiles for each decade, men and women, on a treadmill and on a bike. Between the published deciles we draw straight lines, our arithmetic. The 2022 treadmill numbers came out 1.5 to 4.6 points lower than the 2015 tables, so an older chart can put you lower than this one.
A watch or field test is ranked on the treadmill table, the kind of test the estimates were checked against. A bike test is ranked on the bike table, because bike numbers run lower: men in their 40s have a middle of 27.4 on a bike against 35.3 on a treadmill.
The groups, and what they've gone with
The group names come from the Cleveland Clinic study of 122,007 adults sent for a treadmill test, followed for a median 8.4 years. Below average against above average went with 1.41 times the risk of death, the same as smoking in that study (1.41) and close to diabetes (1.40). The least fit against the most fit went with 5.04 times, and no upper limit of benefit was seen. It's observational, in people sent for a stress test, with fitness estimated from the treadmill stage, so it shows a link, not what changing your number would do. Years of life are lifespan.guide's subject.
The next group up
The weeks come from the 4x4 trial: 40 moderately trained men did four 4-minute intervals three times a week for eight weeks and raised VO2 max 7.2 percent, about 0.9 percent a week. People respond very differently. In the HERITAGE study, 481 sedentary adults on the same 20-week plan gained an average of about 400 ml a minute, some almost nothing and some more than a liter.
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
- Helgerud J and others, Aerobic high-intensity intervals improve VO2max more than moderate training, 2007europepmc.org
- Bouchard C and others, Familial aggregation of VO2max response to exercise training: results from the HERITAGE Family Study, 1999europepmc.org
- Shephard RJ, Maximal oxygen intake and independence in old age, 2009europepmc.org
- Fleg JL and others, Accelerated longitudinal decline of aerobic capacity in healthy older adults, Circulation, 2005europepmc.org
