Cardiovascular Assessment

VO₂max is the maximum amount of oxygen a person can consume per minute and is a measurement of cardiovascular fitness. To measure VO₂max (maximum oxygen uptake) directly, sophisticated and expensive laboratory equipment is needed, and the person being tested must exercise until exhaustion. But many tests that do not require sophisticated and expensive equipment can indirectly measure VO₂max. More important, these indirect measures of  VO₂max do not require you to exercise to exhaustion. Instructions for two self-assessments that allow indirect measurements of  VO₂max (the step test and the one-mile run test) are in chapter 7.