VO2 max for women: female chart by age and how to improve it

Here's VO2 max by age for females, from lab-measured data rather than a chart someone found on a forum: in the FRIEND registry of treadmill tests, the median woman aged 20 to 29 scored 37.6 mL/kg/min, falling to 26.7 at 40 to 49 and 18.3 at 70 to 79 (Kaminsky, Arena and Myers, 2015). The authors put the decline at roughly 10% per decade.

Below is the full women's chart by percentile, how to read your own number (including the one on your watch), why different charts disagree, and the training that actually moves it. The training part is where an app that does the programming for you earns its keep; the chart part you can do with a coffee.

If you've arrived here from the cycle side of things, the hub guide to workout with menstruation explained covers how your cycle fits into training. Short version: it doesn't change the advice below.

VO2 max by age, female: the chart

VO2 max is the highest rate your body can take in and use oxygen, in milliliters per kilogram of body weight per minute. These are percentiles of measured VO2 max for women from treadmill tests in the FRIEND registry. Its first reference paper drew on 7,783 maximal tests from eight experienced US labs, in men and women aged 20 to 79 without cardiovascular disease (Kaminsky, Arena and Myers, 2015). The full table is open access on PubMed Central.

Source: Kaminsky, Arena and Myers, 2015, women's treadmill percentiles, mL/kg/min.

Whatever row you're in, the route up the table is the same: consistent aerobic work plus some hard running, sitting next to your strength training rather than competing with it. A training plan built for women that schedules both is the simplest way to do that.

How to read the women's VO2 max chart

The percentile tells you what share of tested women your age scored below you. A plain-English reading:

So "what is a good VO2 max for a woman?" Anything above the 50th percentile for your age is above average: above 30.2 in your 30s, above 26.7 in your 40s, above 23.4 in your 50s.

Three caveats that matter:

1. ›The people tested weren't everyone. They were adults who had a lab exercise test at labs that contributed data. A 2022 update from the same registry, with 34 labs and many more tests, put its treadmill standards 1.5 to 4.6 mL/kg/min lower than the 2015 values (Kaminsky et al., 2022).
2. ›The machine matters. The same 2022 paper found median values were higher on a treadmill than on a bike (Kaminsky et al., 2022). Compare treadmill to treadmill.
3. ›It drops with age. The 2022 update put the average decline at 13.5% per decade on the treadmill across six decades (Kaminsky et al., 2022). That's why charts split by decade.

Why women's VO2 max charts disagree

If you've seen a chart with friendlier numbers for women in their 40s and up, it was probably predicted, not measured. The FRIEND paper printed its measured values next to Cooper Clinic reference values, which were predicted from treadmill test time (Kaminsky, Arena and Myers, 2015). The women's medians compare like this:

At 20–29 they agree. By 60–69 the predicted chart is almost 9 points kinder. The FRIEND authors concluded that measured reference data gives a more accurate interpretation than standards based on workload estimates. If a chart doesn't say whether its numbers were measured or predicted, be skeptical.

And your watch?

Useful for trends, shaky for absolute numbers. In a 2026 study of 40 adults, half of them women, Apple Watch Series 10 underestimated lab VO2 max by about 6 mL/kg/min on average with wide limits of agreement, and placed only 5 participants (14%) in the correct FRIEND percentile band (Lambe et al., 2026). Compare your watch with itself over time, not with a lab chart.

Women's VO2 max vs men's

In FRIEND, men's VO2 max was higher than women's at every age, and the differences were statistically significant (Kaminsky, Arena and Myers, 2015). That's a population average, and it says nothing about any individual. A woman in her 20s at the 90th percentile (51.3) scores above the median man her age (48.0).

VO2 max is also only one piece of endurance. Threshold, running economy and pacing decide most race results, and a guide to do women have more endurance than men is a different question with its own research.

Does your cycle affect VO2 max?

We haven't found good evidence that your cycle meaningfully changes your VO2 max test result, and we're not going to invent some. What the evidence does say about performance generally: a 2020 meta-analysis found performance might be trivially reduced in the early follicular phase, based on mostly low-quality evidence, and recommended a personalized approach.

If you're booking a lab test or a field test, the practical move is consistency: retest at a similar point in your cycle, so you're comparing like with like. The same logic applies to tracking HRV; a normal hrv for women explained in full shows how much those readings move across a cycle. The hormones behind it all are covered in menstrual cycle hormones, and our guide to menstrual cycle, heart rate and HRV goes deeper on the heart rate side. On rough days, our working out on your period guide comes down to adjusting the session rather than skipping the week.

How women can improve VO2 max

Both steady endurance training and interval training raise VO2 max. A meta-analysis of 28 controlled trials in healthy adults aged 18 to 45 found large improvements from both compared with no exercise: about 4.9 mL/kg/min for endurance training and 5.5 for high-intensity intervals, with a possibly small extra benefit for intervals over steady training. Gains were greater in people with lower starting fitness and in longer programs.

Do women respond as well as men? The evidence is thin. A 2019 meta-analysis of eight studies in 175 untrained men and women found men gained more VO2 max from the same dose of endurance training, about 1.95 mL/kg/min more on average. Eight small studies in untrained people is not the last word, and women in those studies still improved. Train for your own number.

What that looks like in a week:

• ›Mostly easy running. Conversational pace, most of your running. It builds the base everything sits on.
• ›One VO2 max session. Coaches' classic is 4 x 4 minutes hard (around RPE 8–9) with 3 minutes of easy jogging between. Hills, bike or rower work too.
• ›Consistency over months. The longer programs in the meta-analysis did better. So will you.
• ›Keep lifting. Strength work doesn't fight your aerobic fitness when it's scheduled sensibly: heavy legs on an easy-run day, never the day before the hard session or the long run. After 40, it matters more, not less; strength training for women over 40 makes that case.

If you track recovery data, use it to protect the hard session, not to cancel every one. A guide to what is a good hrv score covers how to read it sensibly.

How exrsz handles this

exrsz builds a periodized plan from your goal, schedule, level and equipment, so a woman near the bottom of the chart and one near the top get different sessions. It balances hard running against your lifting in one plan, adapts each week to how you actually trained, and reshuffles missed sessions instead of piling them up.

FAQ

What is a good VO2 max for a woman by age?

Anything above the 50th percentile for your age. In lab-tested US women, the medians were 37.6 mL/kg/min at 20–29, 30.2 at 30–39, 26.7 at 40–49, 23.4 at 50–59 and 20.0 at 60–69 (Kaminsky, Arena and Myers, 2015).

What is the average VO2 max for a 40-year-old woman?

For women aged 40–49 in the FRIEND data, the median was 26.7 mL/kg/min, with the 25th and 75th percentiles at 22.1 and 32.4 (Kaminsky, Arena and Myers, 2015).

What is an excellent VO2 max for a woman?

The 90th percentile is a fair line for "top tenth": 51.3 at 20–29, 41.4 at 30–39, 38.4 at 40–49 and 32.0 at 50–59 in lab-tested women (Kaminsky, Arena and Myers, 2015).

Can women increase VO2 max after 40?

Training still works, though most trials studied younger adults. A meta-analysis of 28 trials in adults aged 18 to 45 found large gains from both steady endurance training and intervals, with bigger gains for those starting less fit. In coaching practice, the same approach applies after 40: consistency over months matters most.

Is my watch's VO2 max accurate?

Not for an exact number. One 2026 study found Apple Watch Series 10 underestimated lab VO2 max by about 6 mL/kg/min on average with wide error (Lambe et al., 2026). Use it to track your own trend.