Fitness Tests You Can Do Yourself On A Treadmill

So in the final instalment of my articles on testing your fitness I’m going to outline 2 tests you can do on a treadmill.

The first is a sub-maximal test and one that I got from the American College of Exercise.

Sub-maximal means that you need to stay with in your comfort zone and certainly do not work at a level that would elevate heart rate any where near maximum.

It then uses a relatively complex calculation to workout a predicted VO2 max.

You need to walk on a treadmill and cover a complete mile, but you will also need some values to plug in to these calculations:


VO2 max = 132.853

- 0.0769 x (Wt, in lbs)
- 0.3877 x (age)
+ 6.315 x (gender) M=x1, F=x0
- 3.2649 x(time)
- -0.1565 x (Heart Rate at completion)



The second way of using a treadmill is too run on it.

In this fitness test you need to try and run a mile and a half in as fast a time as possible.

Then simply put the figures in to this calculation:

VO2 = Distance (m) / time x 0.2 + 3.5

This will give you a re pretty good indication – there are of course errors in both tests but you should only get an error rate of around 2-4%.

Whenever you use a treadmill you should have a gradient of 1 degree as a minimum (it better replicates out door running)

Let us know which type of test you’ve tried and what your score was.

Until next time,

Are you tough enough for the hardcore workout?

Andrew & Alex

P.S. Don’t forget to pick up your free 4 week hardcore workout training program by **clicking here**