VO2 Max is the ability for your body to take in, process, use, and expel oxygen. It is used as a way of measuring cardiac ability. The precise measurement of this is actually quite a complicated process that involves a lab setting with analytical equipment hooked up to a subject on a treadmill. Luckily however a method has been developed that is within a +/- 5 ml/kg/min degree of accuracy. So, if through this method you compute your VO2 max to be 45 ml/kg/min, it is 68% likely that your actual VO2 max is between 40 and 50 ml/kg/min. Not bad for using no equipment at all other than a stopwatch and your fingers to read your pulse. This test is called the Rockport Walk Test.
To begin the test, do an easy warm-up and then walk as briskly as possible for one mile. As soon as you finish, record your heart rate using your pulse and the stopwatch.
You can either enter the data into
this website, or compute it yourself using the actual equation stated below (this is the same equation that the website uses).
VO2 max (ml/kg/min) = 132.853 - (0.0769 x body weight in [pounds]) - (0.3877 x age [years]) + (6.3150 x gender [female = 0; male = 1]) - (3.2649 x 1-mile walk time [in minutes and hundredths]) - (0.1565 x 1-minute heart rate at end of mile [beats per minute]).
So how did you rate?
Here is a website that lists the norms for cardiac ability.
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