My Friends,
Here is where we delve into the idea of cardio.
Blah. We all hate it. But you have to do it. Not only does it burn Calories but it can be used as a great tool for increasing the size of your cardiac muscle tissue – aka, it’ll make your heart bigger.
One thing I pride myself on with my athletes is speed. Running is ingrained in our body’s physiology and as humans, we have a responsibility to take full advantage! The only full-time bipedal mammals that stand fully upright on the regular – our bodies were meant to be upright and efficient in gait.
The benefits of cardiovascular exercise are astronomical – and when they inevitably make a pill that gives you the same benefit you’ll receive from cardiovascular exercise – is the same day I no longer have a job!
MEASURING YOUR CARDIOVASCULAR HEALTH – 1.5 mile run time and VO2max
The cardiovascular test I chose to integrate is simple, easy, does take some time and is much more applicable to function than other tests out there. It is used by the Navy (my wife loves it) and various other factions to rank individuals in cardiovascular fitness. Pop quiz points – The football association of Singapore actually uses the test as a means for motivation…you must run 1.5 miles in <10:15 in order to play and those who run it faster than 8 minutes and 30 seconds receive $200.
The rules of the 1.5 mile run:
- Find a flat surface with a known distance(such as a track).
- Grab a stop watch or start your watch and run around said flat surface for 1.5 miles (that would be 6 laps for a track)
- Record the time it takes for you to finish the 1.5 mile run.
Pretty self-explanatory and simple. With that said, here are your norms! Courtesy of Topendsports.
| Rating | Males | Females |
|---|---|---|
| Very poor | > 16:01 | > 19:01 |
| Poor | 16:00-14:01 | 19:00-18:31 |
| Fair | 14:00-12:01 | 18:30-15:55 |
| Good | 12:00-10:46 | 15:54-13:31 |
| Excellent | 10:45-9:45 | 13:30-12:30 |
| Superior | < 9:44 | < 12:29 |
Pretty cool eh?? I’ll give you twenty minutes or so. Come back, post your time and calculate your VO2max based off of your time, plugging in your gender, bodyweight and mile time to the equation below…
- VO2max (ml. kg-1.min-1) = 88.02 + (3.716 * gender) – (0.0753 * body weight in pounds) – (2.767 * time for 1.5 miles in minutes and fractions of minutes)
- Where gender = 1 for males and 0 for females.
Stella Fitness 