Gyroscope Benchmarks / Strength
What is a good VO2 max?
VO2 max measures the highest rate at which your body can use oxygen during hard exercise, a practical marker of cardiorespiratory fitness.
Why it matters
VO2 max is the size of your engine. It sets how many flights of stairs you can climb before you have to stop, how far you can carry a suitcase or a sleeping child uphill, and how fast you recover once you put them down. Every hard thing your body does runs on the same supply of oxygen, and this number is how much of it you can deliver per minute.
It falls with time unless you work on it. In the reference tables on this page, the median man goes from 48.0 mL/kg/min in his twenties to 24.4 in his seventies, and the median woman from 37.6 to 18.3. That is roughly half the engine gone. Below a certain point, a brisk walk uphill becomes near-maximal effort, and the ordinary parts of a day start to feel like exercise. The fitness gradient runs the other way too: in 122,007 adults tested on a treadmill, the fittest group had the lowest mortality, and the benefit had no ceiling.
Mandsager et al., JAMA Network Open, 2018
Feel is a poor guide here. A run feels hard when you are fitter and hard when you are tired, hot, or short on sleep, and a wearable estimate drifts with pace and heart rate from week to week. One test, run the same way on the same route once a month, gives you a line you can trust, and after a year it tells you plainly whether the work paid off.
What this test measures
VO2 max is expressed as milliliters of oxygen used per kilogram of body mass per minute. It reflects the combined work of the lungs, heart, blood, and exercising muscles. Values often fall in a broad 25–60 mL/kg/min range, but age, sex, test method, and training all change what a result means.
Kaminsky, Mayo Clinic Proceedings, 2015
Higher cardiorespiratory fitness is associated with lower long-term mortality. Among 122,007 patients referred for treadmill testing, the adjusted hazard ratio for low versus elite fitness was 5.04, with a 95 percent confidence interval of 4.10–6.20. The authors observed no upper limit to the association within their data.
Mandsager, JAMA Network Open, 2018
This is an association, not a diagnosis or a promise that changing one number causes a particular outcome. A directly measured laboratory result and a wearable estimate should also be treated as different methods.
Do the test right now
- 1Check an estimate you already have. On iPhone, open Health, then Browse, Heart, and Cardio Fitness for Apple Watch data. In Garmin Connect, open More, Performance Stats, and VO2 Max.
- 2For a field estimate, use a flat track or measured route. Warm up, then cover as much distance as possible in exactly 12 minutes. Record the distance in meters.
- 3Use the Cooper conversion anchors below. They estimate VO2 max from distance and are not the same as measuring respiratory gases.
- 4For the reference method, schedule a laboratory cardiopulmonary exercise test with direct gas analysis on a treadmill or cycle.
| 12-minute distance | Estimated VO2 max |
|---|---|
| 2.0 km | 33.4 mL/kg/min |
| 2.4 km | 42.4 mL/kg/min |
| 2.8 km | 51.3 mL/kg/min |
Reference bands
The FRIEND registry published directly measured treadmill values from 7,783 maximal tests in adults without known cardiovascular disease. The tables give the 50th and 75th percentiles by decade. The highlighted 75th-percentile rows are useful high-fitness references, not medical thresholds.
Kaminsky, Mayo Clinic Proceedings, 2015
| Men | 20–29 | 30–39 | 40–49 | 50–59 | 60–69 | 70–79 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 50th percentile | 48.0 | 42.4 | 37.8 | 32.6 | 28.2 | 24.4 |
| 75th percentile | 55.2 | 49.2 | 45.0 | 39.7 | 34.5 | 30.4 |
Kaminsky, Mayo Clinic Proceedings, 2015. Values are mL/kg/min.
| Women | 20–29 | 30–39 | 40–49 | 50–59 | 60–69 | 70–79 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 50th percentile | 37.6 | 30.2 | 26.7 | 23.4 | 20.0 | 18.3 |
| 75th percentile | 44.7 | 36.1 | 32.4 | 27.6 | 23.8 | 20.8 |
Kaminsky, Mayo Clinic Proceedings, 2015. Values are mL/kg/min.
How to improve
Two things raise VO2 max: how much blood your heart pumps per beat, and how well your muscles pull oxygen out of it. Steady aerobic volume builds the second, hard intervals push the first, and both take months of repeated sessions rather than a few heroic ones.
- Build the base first. Aim for three to five aerobic sessions a week at a pace where you can still speak in full sentences. Most of your weekly minutes belong here; it is what lets you absorb the hard work later.
- Add one interval session a week. After a month or two of steady training, try four rounds of four minutes at an effort you could hold for about ten minutes, with three easy minutes between. Long intervals near maximal heart rate are the most direct stimulus for the number.
- Keep easy days easy. If every run ends up moderately hard, you never recover enough to go truly hard on interval day.
- Use hills or a bike if running hurts. Cycling, rowing, and uphill hiking load the heart the same way with far less pounding.
- Lose fat, not muscle, if you carry extra. The number is per kilogram of body mass, so the same lungs and heart score higher in a lighter body. Keep protein and strength work in place while you diet, or the lean tissue goes too.
- Sleep enough to adapt. The heart and mitochondria change between sessions, not during them. Short nights blunt that and make the next hard session feel worse than it is. New to hard exercise or on heart medication: see a doctor first.
Retest once a month, on the same route, in similar weather, rested, and warmed up the same way. A 12-minute test after a poor night or a hard week measures that day, not your fitness. Keep the protocol fixed and the line the app draws is one you can believe.
Track it
Log it in the app.
Download Gyroscope and run VO₂ Max in about a minute. See how you compare to your peers, to the studies, and to your own baseline over time.
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