What's a Good VO2 Max? Norms by Age and Sex

“Is my VO2 max good?” is one of those questions that has no single answer, because a good VO2 max is entirely relative to who’s asking. A score of 45 ml/kg/min is average for a 25-year-old man, but it would put a 60-year-old woman in the top few percent of her age group. So before you judge your number, you need the one thing that makes it meaningful: a reference table for your own age and sex. If you already have a number to check, the VO2 max calculator with age- and sex-based fitness rating will place it for you in seconds. This article explains where those reference numbers come from and how to read them honestly.

What VO2 max measures, briefly

VO2 max is the maximum volume of oxygen your body can take in and use during all-out exercise, expressed in milliliters of oxygen per kilogram of body weight per minute (ml/kg/min). It reflects how well your lungs, heart, blood, and muscles work together to deliver and burn oxygen. It matters far beyond athletics: higher cardiorespiratory fitness is one of the strongest measurable predictors of how long and how well you live, a link we cover in depth in VO2 max and lifespan.

Why the norms are split by age and sex

A ‘good’ VO2 max is always relative to your age and sex: a 45 that’s average at 25 is excellent at 60.

Two structural facts drive every VO2 max chart:

• Sex. On average, men have larger hearts, more hemoglobin to carry oxygen, and a higher percentage of lean mass. As a result, female norms sit roughly 15–20% below male norms at every age. This is a population-level difference, not a ceiling on any individual woman.
• Age. VO2 max peaks in the 20s and declines gradually thereafter. In the Norwegian reference study of 3,816 healthy adults, the drop accelerates after 40 to roughly 10% per decade. The good news, covered separately, is that consistent training offsets much of that decline. Biological age matters more than the calendar here.

Because of this, a raw number tells you almost nothing on its own. What you want is your percentile within your age-and-sex bracket.

Reference values: two useful lenses

There’s no single “official” VO2 max table: different datasets, populations, and testing methods produce slightly different numbers. Two are especially worth knowing.

The first is the set of fitness categories popularized by the Cooper Institute and reproduced in the American College of Sports Medicine’s guidelines. These percentile-based bands (Poor through Superior) are what most calculators, including ours, use to rate a score. Here are the approximate lower thresholds in ml/kg/min:

Men

Age	Fair	Good	Excellent	Superior
20–29	42	47	52	56
30–39	39	45	49	53
40–49	37	43	48	52
50–59	34	40	45	49
60+	30	36	42	46

Women

Age	Fair	Good	Excellent	Superior
20–29	33	38	44	49
30–39	32	37	42	46
40–49	30	35	40	44
50–59	28	32	37	41
60+	24	29	34	38

Read a row like this: a 45-year-old man at 44 ml/kg/min is “Good,” while the same score for a 45-year-old woman is “Excellent.” Anything below the “Fair” column falls into Fair or Poor territory.

The second lens is the average healthy person, which helps you see the middle of the distribution rather than the category edges. The Norwegian PLoS One study measured VO2 max directly (with gas analysis) in nearly 4,000 healthy adults and reported these means:

Age	Men (mean)	Women (mean)
20–29	54.4	43.0
30–39	49.1	40.0
40–49	47.2	38.4
50–59	42.6	34.4
60–69	39.2	31.1
70+	35.3	28.3

Those are averages, not targets; half of each group scored higher. Notice they run higher than the “Good” thresholds above, partly because this was an active Norwegian cohort and partly because the numbers come from direct laboratory measurement rather than estimation.

What “good” means

Putting it together, a practical way to read your result:

• Average or better for your bracket is good: it already places you above the health risk associated with low fitness.
• “Excellent” or “Superior” means you’re clearly in the top slice of your peers and carry the fitness profile linked to the longest healthspans.
• Below “Fair” is the most important zone to notice, because moving out of the bottom rung delivers the largest health return: the jump from unfit to moderately fit is where mortality risk drops most steeply.

One honest caveat: most people never get a lab test. If your number comes from a watch or a field test, treat it as an estimate with a real margin of error, and watch the trend more than the absolute value. A modern US reference set, the FRIEND Registry, was built specifically because older cutoffs no longer matched the general population, so expect some variation between charts, and don’t over-interpret a two- or three-point difference.

Turning a category into action

If your number lands lower than you’d like, the encouraging part is that VO2 max is highly trainable at any age. A mix of easy aerobic volume and a small dose of higher-intensity work reliably moves it, as we lay out in how to actually raise your VO2 max. The single best next step is knowing your starting point: run your estimate through the age- and sex-adjusted VO2 max calculator, note the category, and re-test in eight to twelve weeks to see the trend.

This article is educational and not medical advice. Maximal exercise testing carries risk for some people: if you have a heart condition, symptoms like chest pain, or have been sedentary, talk to a clinician before doing all-out efforts.

Sources

• Loe H, Rognmo Ø, Saltin B, Wisløff U. Aerobic Capacity Reference Data in 3816 Healthy Men and Women 20–90 Years. PLoS One. 2013
• Kaminsky LA, Arena R, Myers J. Reference Standards for Cardiorespiratory Fitness Measured With Cardiopulmonary Exercise Testing (FRIEND Registry). Mayo Clin Proc. 2015 (PMID 26455884)
• Cooper Institute / ACSM fitness-category percentile bands, as reproduced in ACSM’s Guidelines for Exercise Testing and Prescription.