VO₂ Max Estimator — educational

VO₂ max is the maximum rate at which your body can take up and use oxygen during exercise, measured in ml/kg/min. It's the single best indicator of cardiovascular fitness. Pick one of the four field tests below — the Cooper 12-min run, the Rockport 1-mile walk, the Bruce treadmill protocol, or a 1.5-mile run for time — enter the inputs from the test you can actually perform, and the page predicts your VO₂ max and classifies it against the ACSM age-and-sex norms. Pick the formula closest to the test you ran; averaging across protocols is a known methodological error. Nothing leaves your browser.

Cooper 12-minute run

Run as far as you can in 12 minutes on a flat surface (a track, a measured stretch of road, or a treadmill with the distance readout). Enter the distance.

Estimated VO₂ max
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ml/kg/min
ACSM classification: —

All formulas at a glance

Each formula is its own validated model; the numbers are not interchangeable. The headline above is the prediction for the test you have open. The table below shows what every formula would predict for the inputs you've filled in, so you can sanity-check a result against a second method.

ACSM age-and-sex classification

VO₂ max thresholds for the median adult, from the ACSM Guidelines for Exercise Testing & Prescription (10th ed., 2018, Appendix B). A given VO₂ max falls into the highest band whose lower edge it meets.

Age Sex Poor Fair Good Excellent Superior

About the formulas

  • Cooper (1968) — VO₂ = (d_m − 504.9) / 44.73. Validated on U.S. Air Force men; the simplest field test (all-out run for 12 minutes). Best for fit populations; tends to under-read in untrained adults.
  • Rockport / Kline (1987) — a 6-variable regression on weight, age, sex, walk time, and finishing heart rate. Less exhausting than Cooper, suitable for older or untrained adults. Requires a heart-rate monitor or careful pulse count at the end of the walk.
  • Bruce / Foster (1984) — treadmill-based, originally designed for cardiology screening. Validated against metabolic-cart VO₂ max on large cohorts. Predicts ~5–8 % higher than Cooper at the same fitness level (Robergs & Landwehr 2002).
  • Daniels & Gilbert (1979) — a 1.5-mile time-trial regression popular in U.S. military fitness testing. Most useful for runners — the time-trial effort matches what a trained runner is willing to sustain.

All four formulas are field tests; the lab gold standard is a metabolic cart with a graded exercise test to volitional exhaustion. Expect ±5–10 % error vs the lab. The ACSM band is the midpoint of a normal distribution for your age and sex — a "Good" rating means roughly the 60th–80th percentile, not a personal verdict.