As seen briefly in a previous Instagram post , 6 minutes running test is a cheap method to evaluate endurance ability of an athlete.
It's really useful to estimate the V02 Max without expensive laboratory machineries. Obviously it isn't as precise as a lab test but it can be used to have an idea about our endurance fitness condition.
WHAT IS VO2MAX?
V02 Max is an index measured in ml/min/kg which indicates the amount of Oxigen that our body can utilize in a minute and shows quite well your endurance fitness level. So the higher it is, the fitter you are. As you can see from the measure unit, kg of body weigth affects also this value with an inverted proportion.
MATERIALS FOR THE TEST
Smartwatch or smartphone with GPS with running tracking app
Flat route without a lot of direction changes and no interruptions
A lot of effort!
HOW TO DO IT?
It's quite easy to do, if we are not considering the effort requested ):
After a proper warm up - at least 10 minutes of a low pace run with changes of rhytm - you are ready to start the test.
When you activate you smartwatch, it starts to track you run. During this 6 minutes you should run as fast as you can but with a constant pace to keep the test effective.
At 6:00 minutes you stop your smartwatch and then you stop your run.
Now you can do 5 - 10 minutes of low pace run to drain lactate.
DATA ANALYSIS
Now it's time to evaluate data collected.
Your smartwatch will show a lot of data such as pace, distance, hearth rate, etc...
We only need to take into account you run distance expressed in meters. If you use Imperial system measures convert this data in meters before proceed with the next step.
Let's do an example to better understand what calculations you have to do. Peter has performed a 6 minutes running test and his smartwatch shows that he has run 1520 meters during his 6 minutes run.
We can estimate his V02 Max with this calculation:
1520 / 100 = 15.20
15.20 * 3.5 = 53.2
So 53.2 ml/min/Kg is Peter's V02 Max, that can be easily simplified to 53.
Only run distance can change in the calculations expressed before, the other data remains fixed. I mean, we should divide run distance with 100 and multiply the result with 3.5 as a default operation. As you can see, it's very simple.
TYPICAL VALUES
Inactive people 35 - 40
Low trained 45
Trained 50 - 55
Top footballer 55 - 65
F1 driver 55 - 65
Top marathon runner or cyclist > 80
If you remember in an other Instagram post we have estimated Pierre Gasly's V02 Max analysing a 5 Km run test made in January 2020.
Porbably there will be an article on this topic.
Stay tuned!
Written by
Enrico Repossi
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