VO2 Max by Age: What's a Good Score for Men and Women?
A good VO2 max isn't a single number. It rises and falls with age and differs between men and women, so the same score that's excellent at 55 can be ordinary at 25. What counts is where you sit for your own age and sex.
Compare your number to the median for your age and sex. At or above it puts you in the top half.
| Age | 20–29 | 30–39 | 40–49 | 50–59 | 60–69 | 70–79 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Women | 38 | 30 | 27 | 23 | 20 | 18 |
| Men | 48 | 42 | 38 | 33 | 28 | 24 |
Percentiles for your decade: VO2 max in your 40s 50s 60s 70s
Median VO2 max in ml/kg/min, from maximal treadmill tests. The full percentile ranges, the 25th and 90th for every band, are in the table further down, and the tool below places a specific number inside them. Two caveats decide how much weight to put on any of it. These are lab figures from direct gas analysis, and a watch estimates VO2 max from heart rate and pace, which can differ by several points in either direction. And the per-kilogram form itself is contested: a systematic review of scaling across more than 6,500 people found that neither the right body-size variable nor the right exponent is settled, so a percentile is least trustworthy for readers furthest from average body mass.
"Is my VO2 max good?" is the question, and the honest answer is that it only makes sense against your age and sex. A 38 is excellent for a 60-year-old woman and unremarkable for a 25-year-old man. VO2 max, the maximum amount of oxygen your body can use during hard exercise, is one of the most useful single numbers a wearable gives you, and one of the most age-dependent. It peaks in your twenties and declines steadily from there, faster if you're sedentary, slower if you train. So a score is only meaningful next to people like you.
The tool places your number against the ACSM reference percentiles for your age and sex, and the table beneath shows the full set. One caveat up front: these are lab-test values, and your watch only estimates VO2 max. We come back to how much that matters.
Enter your age, sex, and the VO2 max your watch or a test gave you. We place it against the ACSM percentile tables for your age and sex. We show where your score sits. What it means for you depends on your goals, your history, and your trend over time.
Fill in all three to see where your score falls.
Reference values: ACSM's Guidelines for Exercise Testing and Prescription, 11th ed. (Table 4.7), from The Cooper Institute's Aerobics Center Longitudinal Study, more than 80,000 adults, maximal treadmill tests. Values in ml/kg/min.
What VO2 max is, in one paragraph
VO2 max is the maximum amount of oxygen your body can take in and use during all-out exercise, measured in milliliters of oxygen per kilogram of body weight per minute (ml/kg/min). It reflects the size of your aerobic engine: how well your lungs, heart, blood, and muscles work together to deliver and burn oxygen when you push hard. A higher number means a bigger engine. It is one of the most studied numbers in exercise science and a strong marker of cardiorespiratory fitness, which is part of why so many watches now estimate it.
What the reference numbers actually show
The standard reference is the percentile data from the Cooper Institute's Aerobics Center Longitudinal Study, the same tables used in the ACSM exercise guidelines. They come from more than 80,000 adults who completed maximal treadmill tests with direct gas analysis, broken down by age and sex. One pattern dominates.
VO2 max falls about 10% per decade after age 30, driven by drops in maximum heart rate, the blood pumped per beat, and lean muscle. The median for men slides from about 48 in their 20s to 24 by their 70s, and for women from about 38 to 18.1 Regular aerobic training roughly halves that rate of decline in the reference literature.
The second thing the data makes clear is the size of the sex difference. Men test about 15 to 20% higher than women of the same age, largely from higher hemoglobin, a larger heart relative to body weight, and more lean mass. This is exactly why VO2 max is read against your own age and sex, never as one universal number. Here is the full reference set.
A newer, larger reference dataset backs these figures up. The FRIEND registry, an ongoing multi-lab consortium that directly tested 11,678 adults across three countries, reports a 50th-percentile VO2 max for the 20s of 49.5 ml/kg/min for men and 40.6 for women, closely matching the ACSM numbers above.3 It's a useful, independent confirmation that these reference ranges still hold up against more recent, more geographically varied data, not just the original cohort.
| Age | Women | Men | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Low (25th) | Median | High (90th) | Low (25th) | Median | High (90th) | |
| 20–29 | 30 | 38 | 51 | 40 | 48 | 62 |
| 30–39 | 25 | 30 | 41 | 36 | 42 | 57 |
| 40–49 | 22 | 27 | 38 | 32 | 38 | 52 |
| 50–59 | 20 | 23 | 32 | 27 | 33 | 46 |
| 60–69 | 17 | 20 | 27 | 24 | 28 | 40 |
| 70–79 | 16 | 18 | 23 | 20 | 24 | 37 |
VO2 max in ml/kg/min, shown as 25th percentile, median (50th), and 90th percentile. Source: ACSM Guidelines for Exercise Testing and Prescription, 11th ed. (Table 4.7), from The Cooper Institute Aerobics Center Longitudinal Study, maximal treadmill tests. The interactive tool above uses the full 5th-to-95th percentile breakpoints.
KnowYourPrime Evidence Registry: Finding KYP-ER-0015: VO2 Max by Age and Sex: US Reference Standards.
How to read your own score against it
Find your age row and your sex. The median is the midpoint for people like you, the point half score above and half below. The ACSM framework then groups percentiles into categories: below the 20th is Poor, 20th to 39th Fair, 40th to 59th Average, 60th to 79th Good, 80th to 94th Excellent, and 95th or above Superior. They describe where a reading sits in the reference group. The same 40 ml/kg/min that is merely Average for a 25-year-old man is Good for a 50-year-old man, because it is always read within your own age and sex. Each decade page places common readings between the full table's breakpoints: 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s.
The context that matters most is your own trend. A single VO2 max number, especially one estimated by a watch, is a snapshot. What tells you something is the direction over months: a number climbing as you train, holding steady, or drifting down. Where you sit in the table tells you the starting line. Your own trend tells you which way you are moving.
The percentile tells you where you're standing. Your own trend over the months tells you which way you're walking. The second one is usually the more useful answer.
Why men score higher: on average men carry more hemoglobin to ferry oxygen, a larger heart relative to body size, and more lean muscle to use it. That raises oxygen delivery and use, which is why the same VO2 max sits at a different percentile for a man and a woman of the same age.
How accurate is your watch's VO2 max?
This is the caveat that matters most for this number. The reference values above come from maximal lab tests where you exercise to exhaustion in a mask that measures the oxygen you actually use. Your Garmin, Apple Watch, or Coros does something very different: it estimates VO2 max from the relationship between your heart rate and your pace during ordinary runs and walks. For many people that estimate lands within a few ml/kg/min of a lab value, which is useful. But the estimate leans on accurate heart rate and pace data, so it drifts when your heart rate readings are noisy, when you mostly do non-running exercise, or when conditions like heat distort the relationship.
The practical upshot: your watch's VO2 max is a good tracker of your own trend and a rough placement on the percentile table, not a precise verdict. A two- or three-point wobble between weeks is usually estimation noise, not a real change in fitness. Read the direction over months, not the digits week to week.
One more wrinkle worth knowing: some devices track VO2 max separately by activity. Garmin, for example, calculates a running VO2 max and a cycling VO2 max independently, since the two use different underlying data (GPS-based pace for running, power-meter data for cycling). If your two numbers don't match, that isn't an error. It reflects how conditioned your body is for each specific activity, not one single unified fitness score.
What moves VO2 max
Beyond age and sex, the research points consistently to the same levers. Aerobic training, especially efforts that push close to your peak, is the strongest driver of improvement, with untrained people often gaining 15 to 20% over a structured program in the literature. Consistent endurance volume, losing excess body fat (since the number is scaled to body weight), and simply being less sedentary all tend to track with higher values. On the other side, detraining, illness, and the steady pressure of age move it down. Naming these is not a training plan. It is so that when your number changes, you have a realistic sense of why.
How much any one person gains from that training varies enormously, even under an identical program. In a 20-week study of 481 sedentary adults doing the exact same cycling program, the average gain was about 400 ml/min, but individual responses ranged from almost no improvement to more than 1,000 ml/min, with genetics estimated to explain up to 47% of that difference.4 That's a real part of why two people can follow the same plan and see very different results.
What the data doesn't capture
A percentile tells you where you rank among people your age and sex. It does not tell you your health is good or bad on its own, and a wearable estimate is not a diagnosis. VO2 max is strongly associated with health outcomes across large studies,2 but that is a population association, and your single estimated number is not a verdict on your future.
Two honest limits. First, the reference cohort skews toward people fit and motivated enough to complete a maximal treadmill test, so the general-population picture, especially at the low end, may differ somewhat. Second, the number your watch shows is an estimate of a lab measurement, so any single cross-comparison to these tables carries real uncertainty. What the evidence strongly supports is using the percentile for orientation and tracking your own trend over months. What it does not support is treating one estimated figure as a precise statement about your body.
If you came here asking whether your VO2 max is good, the most defensible reading is this: find your age and sex above, see which percentile band your number falls in, remember that your watch's figure is an estimate, and then watch where your own trend goes over the coming months. That is what the data can honestly tell you, and it is enough to stop guessing.
Common questions
What is a good VO2 max for my age?
It depends entirely on your age and sex. The median for men falls from about 48 ml/kg/min in their 20s to about 24 by their 70s, and for women from about 38 to 18. A score above the 60th percentile for your age and sex is rated Good, above the 80th Excellent. There is no single good number across ages.
How accurate is my watch's VO2 max?
A watch estimates VO2 max from your heart rate and pace, not a maximal lab test. For many people it lands within a few ml/kg/min of a lab value, but individual estimates can be off by more and drift with noisy data. Treat it as a trend tracker, not a precise measurement.
Why does VO2 max decline with age?
It falls roughly 10% per decade after about 30, driven by reductions in maximum heart rate, the blood pumped per beat, and lean muscle mass. Regular aerobic training reduces the decline to roughly 5% per decade in the reference literature, though it does not stop it.
Do men and women have different VO2 max?
Yes. Men test about 15 to 20% higher than women of the same age, largely from higher hemoglobin, larger heart size relative to body weight, and more lean mass. This is why VO2 max is always read against age and sex rather than as a single universal number.
What is a good VO2 max for a 40 year old man?
The median for men in the 40 to 49 band is 38 ml/kg/min, with 32 at the 25th percentile and 52 at the 90th. 38 is average for the age, the mid-40s is strong, and 52 or above sits in the top tenth of men that age.
What is a good VO2 max for a 40 year old woman?
The median for women in the 40 to 49 band is 27 ml/kg/min, with 22 at the 25th percentile and 38 at the 90th. 27 is average for the age, the low 30s is strong, and 38 or above sits in the top tenth of women that age.
What is a good VO2 max for a 50 year old man?
The median for men in the 50 to 59 band is 33 ml/kg/min, with 27 at the 25th percentile and 46 at the 90th. 33 is average for the age, the high 30s is strong, and 46 or above sits in the top tenth. A reading near 27 or below is where the reference data places the bottom quarter.
What is a good VO2 max for a 50 year old woman?
The median for women in the 50 to 59 band is 23 ml/kg/min, with 20 at the 25th percentile and 32 at the 90th. 23 is average for the age, the high 20s is strong, and 32 or above sits in the top tenth.
What is a good VO2 max for a 60 year old man?
The median for men in the 60 to 69 band is 28 ml/kg/min, with 24 at the 25th percentile and 40 at the 90th. Note that 28 at 60 would sit below the bottom quarter for a man in his 40s, which is why the number is only meaningful read against its own age band.
What is a good VO2 max for a 60 year old woman?
The median for women in the 60 to 69 band is 20 ml/kg/min, with 17 at the 25th percentile and 27 at the 90th. 27 at 60 is top-tenth for that age and would be close to the median for a woman in her 40s.
What is my VO2 max percentile by age and gender?
Read your number against your own age band and sex in the table above, which gives the 25th percentile, the median and the 90th. Below the 25th puts you in the bottom quarter for your age and sex, the median is the midpoint, and above the 90th is the top tenth. The same absolute figure lands in a different percentile at every age, and roughly 15 to 20 percent higher for men than for women of the same age.
What is a good VO2 max for a 57 year old man?
A 57 year old reads against the 50 to 59 band. For men that age the median is 32.6 ml/kg/min, 39.7 reaches the 75th percentile, which ACSM labels Good, 45.6 the 90th (Excellent) and 50.7 the 95th (Superior). The bottom quarter starts below 27.1. VO2 max in your 50s places common readings on the full table.
What is a good VO2 max for a 70 year old woman?
For women aged 70 to 79 the median is 18.3 ml/kg/min, 20.8 reaches the 75th percentile (Good), 23.1 the 90th (Excellent) and 24.1 the 95th (Superior). The bottom quarter starts below 15.6. VO2 max in your 70s places common readings on the full table.
Is 47 a good VO2 max?
For anyone over 50 it is near the top of the reference data. For men, 47 ml/kg/min falls between the 75th and 90th percentiles in the 40s, between the 90th and 95th in the 50s (Excellent), and above the 95th from 60 on (Superior). For women it is above the 95th percentile from the 30s onward. Below 40 it is closer to the middle: between the 25th percentile and the median for men in their 20s. A watch estimate can differ from a lab test by a few points, so the bracket matters more than the exact digit. Decade pages: 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s.
Is 38 a good VO2 max?
For a man, 38 ml/kg/min sits just above the median in the 40s (37.8), between the median and the 75th percentile in the 50s, between the 75th and 90th in the 60s, and between the 90th and 95th in the 70s (Excellent). For a woman it falls between the 75th and 90th percentiles in the 40s and above the 95th from 50 on. A watch estimate can differ from a lab test by a few points, so the bracket matters more than the exact digit. Decade pages: 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s.
Is a VO2 max of 41 good?
For men, 41 ml/kg/min is above the median in the 40s (between the 50th and 75th percentiles), between the 75th and 90th in the 50s, between the 90th and 95th in the 60s (Excellent), and above the 95th in the 70s. For women it falls between the 90th and 95th percentiles in the 40s and above the 95th from 50 on. A watch estimate can differ from a lab test by a few points, so the bracket matters more than the exact digit. Decade pages: 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s.
Is a VO2 max of 38 good for a woman?
Yes at every age over 30. For women, 38 ml/kg/min is just above the median in the 20s, between the 75th and 90th percentiles in the 30s and 40s, and above the 95th percentile from 50 on. 37 and 39 land in the same brackets with two exceptions: 37 in the 20s falls just below the median, and 39 in the 40s reaches the 90th to 95th band (Excellent). A watch estimate can differ from a lab test by a few points, so the bracket matters more than the exact digit. Decade pages: 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s.
Is a VO2 max of 53 good?
For a man in his 40s, 53 ml/kg/min falls between the 90th and 95th percentiles (Excellent), and from 50 on it is above the 95th (Superior). For a woman over 30 it is above the 95th percentile. Only men in their 20s and 30s sit nearer the middle, between the median and the 90th percentile. A watch estimate can differ from a lab test by a few points, so the bracket matters more than the exact digit. Decade pages: 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s.
References
- American College of Sports Medicine (2021). ACSM's Guidelines for Exercise Testing and Prescription, 11th ed. (Table 4.7).
- Mandsager K, Harb S, Cremer P, Phelan D, Nissen SE, Jaber W (2018). Association of cardiorespiratory fitness with long-term mortality among adults undergoing exercise treadmill testing. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2018.3605
- Peterman JE, Arena R, Myers J, et al. (2020). Development of global reference standards for directly measured cardiorespiratory fitness: a report from the Fitness Registry and Importance of Exercise National Database (FRIEND). doi:10.1016/j.mayocp.2019.06.013
- Bouchard C, An P, Rice T, et al. (1999). Familial aggregation of VO2max response to exercise training: results from the HERITAGE Family Study. doi:10.1152/jappl.1999.87.3.1003
How accurate your watch's VO2 max estimate is, and how to improve the number, are covered with their own sources in the linked articles above.