VO₂ Max Estimate Calculator

Estimate your VO2 max (maximum oxygen consumption) based on heart rate. Assess cardiovascular fitness.

This is the Uth-Sørensen-Overgaard-Pedersen shortcut: divide maximum heart rate by resting heart rate and multiply by a coefficient — 15.3 when Male is selected, 14.7 for Female. No treadmill, no gas mask, just a ratio. That single ratio is why resting pulse is far and away the strongest lever. It sits in the denominator, so at the defaults it shifts the estimate roughly 0.8 ml/kg/min per beat, against about 0.26 per year of age; dropping from 60 to 54 bpm raises the estimate from 48.5 to 53.8 while six years of age barely moves it. Maximum heart rate has two modes. Left at its default of zero, the tool derives it from the age-subtraction rule, 220 minus age, which is the only route by which age influences anything. Type a real number from a tested maximum instead and that value is used verbatim, at which point age stops mattering entirely — set the field to 220 and the estimate rises to 56.1 regardless of how old you are. The Fitness Level label uses sex-specific cutoffs, switching at 35, 45 and 55 for men and at 30, 40 and 50 for women, which is why the same number can read Fair for one profile and Good for another. Because the whole method rests on resting pulse, anything that inflates it — caffeine, poor sleep, illness, a rushed measurement before you have settled — deflates your score. Measure first thing in the morning, lying still, for a full sixty seconds.