VO₂max and cardiopulmonary exercise testing in Leichhardt

Peak VO₂ in both absolute and body-mass terms, your peak workload in METs, and your fitness classification against a published reference registry of healthy adults, matched to your sex, age decade and the ergometer you were tested on.

Because treadmill and cycle testing produce different values in the same person, the comparison is drawn from the table matching your test rather than a generic one.

Your aerobic threshold and your second threshold, identified from your own gas exchange data rather than calculated from your age. Each is reported with its oxygen cost, heart rate, the pace, power or split it corresponds to, and the rating of perceived exertion you gave at that point during the test.

The perceived exertion pairing matters: a threshold you can recognise by feel is one you can train to on a day when the watch is wrong, the heart rate is drifting or the terrain has changed.

Your aerobic threshold is also ranked against published reference data by sex, age and ergometer, so you learn where it sits rather than only what it is.

Zones built from your measured thresholds, expressed as running pace, cycling watts, rowing split or heart rate depending on how you train. Each zone comes with what it is for and how much of your week should sit in it.

Where a zone can be expressed on more than one piece of equipment, the report gives the equivalent for each, so the same intensity transfers between the treadmill, the bike and the erg.

Fat and carbohydrate oxidation measured across the whole test, including the intensity at which fat use peaks and the point at which it drops away. Reported in grams per hour rather than as percentages, because that is the number a fuelling plan is built from.

For an event, this becomes a carbohydrate target per hour, set against what the gut can actually absorb and what your glycogen stores can cover.

If you are training for something specific, the report works your thresholds into a target intensity for that event and converts it to pace or power. Race intensity is set by the duration of the whole event, so a run leg inside a long race is paced differently from the same distance run fresh, and the report gives both with the difference explained.

Pace targets are given as a band rather than a single number, because the conversion from oxygen cost to speed carries error and running economy varies between individuals.

Alongside the ramp to exhaustion, the test can hold one or two fixed paces. The ramp answers what your ceiling is; these blocks answer whether a particular pace is one you can hold, and on what fuel.

Each block is scored over a settled window rather than from the moment the pace changed, because oxygen uptake takes around two minutes to catch up with a step in speed. Your own rating of perceived exertion is recorded against each, so you can find the pace again without a watch.

Objective effort criteria are reported explicitly: peak respiratory exchange ratio, peak heart rate against prediction, and perceived exertion. You are told which criteria were met, which were marginal, and what that means for how much confidence to place in the result.

The effort achieved also determines which reference table is used, and the report states which one was applied.

Oxygen pulse as a surrogate for stroke volume, ventilatory efficiency, breathing reserve, peak breathing rate and tidal volume, and heart rate recovery after the test. Each is reported against a reference range with an interpretation.

Where a measure was derived from a prediction rather than measured directly, the report says so and explains what would be needed to improve it.

This is exercise assessment, not a cardiac diagnostic test. No ECG is recorded and cardiac rhythm is not commented on.

Oxygen uptake expressed per kilogram of fat-free mass as well as per kilogram of body mass. Dividing by total mass charges you for tissue that consumes very little oxygen during exercise; dividing by lean mass compares your oxygen transport against the tissue doing the work.

The report also sets out what a change in fat mass alone would do to your result, in both directions. Because oxygen uptake per kilogram has body mass in the denominator, losing fat raises the number without any change in oxygen transport, and gaining it lowers the number without any loss of fitness. Both are tabulated kilogram by kilogram, with the effect on your thresholds alongside.

Two conditions are stated with it. The gain only holds if what is lost is fat, since losing lean tissue moves the numerator down as fast as the denominator. And it matters more for running and other weight-bearing work than for cycling or rowing, where your mass is largely supported and absolute oxygen uptake is the better guide.

Rather than stopping at where you are, the report projects what a given improvement would mean: the work rates it corresponds to on each piece of equipment, where it would place your thresholds, and how it compares with the alternative of carrying less fat.

Each step is also placed against the reference tables again, so you can see whether it would move your classification or only your absolute numbers.

Cardiorespiratory fitness is among the strongest available predictors of all-cause mortality — in large cohorts the risk attached to poor fitness is comparable to or greater than that of coronary artery disease, smoking or diabetes. Your report translates your own result into that framework.

You are given an index set at 100 for your fitness today, with the associated change for each further step up in capacity. The effect compounds rather than adds, so the index is calculated rather than estimated, and figures from both the directly measured and the larger estimated-fitness cohorts are shown side by side rather than averaged.

Where your fitness already sits in the range at which the fitness–mortality relationship flattens, the report says so, rather than implying further gains buy more survival than the evidence supports. These are associations from observational cohorts, not a personal prognosis, and the report says that too.

Alongside the comparison with your own age decade, your result is set against the peak reference group — healthy adults in their twenties — and against the expected value for your age from a regression equation with survival data behind it.

This is often the more informative comparison. Aerobic capacity declines at a predictable rate per decade, so knowing whether you sit above or below the young-adult median tells you how much of that decline you have actually banked, in a way that a percentile within your own age group cannot.

Where the percentile and the equation disagree in tone, the report explains why: they answer different questions, and neither is wrong.

A prioritised training focus based on the relationship between your thresholds and your peak, with session formats for each quality and how often to do them. Not a generic programme, but a statement of what is actually limiting you.

Plus a recommended retest interval and what to expect to have changed by then.

Where published reference data runs out, the report states a bound rather than inventing a figure. Results falling within measurement error of a classification boundary are reported as indeterminate, because a repeat test could land either side.

Where a figure differs from the one printed by the testing equipment, the report shows both and explains why. Every reference used is named and cited, and the technical limitations of your particular test are listed at the end.