Queens College Step Test Calculator

It is a three-minute submaximal step test that estimates VO2max, the most oxygen your body can use per kilogram per minute, from how fast your heart rate falls afterwards. McArdle, Katch and colleagues at Queens College, New York, built it for grouping large numbers of college women^[1].

It is also called the McArdle step test. Because it uses bleacher-height steps and one pulse count, it works in a gym or classroom without equipment beyond a step and a clock.

The Step timer tab runs the 3 minutes, plays the cadence and marks the 5-second wait and the 15-second count, with a button to tap each beat. One study counted from the 6th second instead, so small differences in the start of the window do exist in published work^[4].

Both equations use recovery heart rate in beats per minute, which is your 15-second count times 4. A common mistake is to put the raw 15-second count into the equation.

The women's equation is from McArdle et al.^[1]. The men's equation is quoted from Katch, McArdle and Katch's textbook in later papers^[4][5]. I did not open the textbook, and I found no primary paper that derives the men's line.

A higher recovery pulse always gives a lower estimate. The slope is steeper for men (0.42 against 0.1847), so a few beats move the men's result more.

The answer depends on who you are, because the evidence comes from three small student samples.

• Women, McArdle 1972. 41 college women (6 athletes, 35 untrained). Recovery pulse and measured VO2max correlated at -0.75. One standard error of prediction was 2.9 ml/kg/min, which was on average within 8% of the measured value, and lower than for the other predictors they tested^[1].
• Men, Chatterjee 2004. 30 sedentary men, average age 22.6, in Kolkata. Measured VO2max was 39.8 ml/kg/min and the predicted figure was 39.3, a difference that was not significant. The two sets of values correlated at 0.95^[2].
• Women, Chatterjee 2005. 40 sedentary women in Kolkata. The predicted and measured means were significantly different and the limits of agreement were poor. The authors said the original equation could not be used as it stands in that group^[3].

The 0.95 figure that you see on many pages compares predicted and measured values in those 30 men. It is not the validity figure from the original study, which was -0.75 in women.

Both Chatterjee papers also derived new equations for Indian students. Hada and colleagues quote them as 55.23 - 0.09 × HR for men and 54.12 - 0.13 × HR for women^[4].

In 158 Nepalese students those equations gave much lower results than the McArdle ones. I did not see them in the original papers, so the calculator does not use them.

That Nepalese study had no measured VO2max, so it cannot say which equation was closer. It does show that the choice of equation moves the answer by several ml/kg/min.

I haven't built a pass-fail scale for this test. The age and sex bands on many pages do not point to a source. Instead the calculator compares your estimate with measured VO2max from the HUNT3 study of 3,816 healthy Norwegians^[6].

Add your age under More options and the result shows whether you are within one SD of your group's mean, or further above or below. That is plain statistics on a different population, not a fitness rating.

The step test itself has an error of its own, so a result near a boundary tells you very little. Use the trend across repeat tests for progress.

• Who it was built on. Young university students in every study I found. Older adults and people with heart conditions are outside what these studies tested, and only 6 of McArdle's 41 women were athletes^[1].
• Counting errors. Heart rate falls quickly in recovery, so starting the count early or late changes the number. Count by hand, or read a monitor over the same 15 seconds. I found no study that validated a chest-strap reading for this test.
• Anything that changes your pulse. Recent exercise, heat, a meal, caffeine, and medicines such as beta-blockers all change heart rate. I found no study that measured how much each does on this test.
• A fixed step height. Everyone uses the same 41.3 cm step, so the work is relatively harder for shorter people. I found no leg-length correction in the sources.
• Cadence. The equations assume the stated steps a minute, and a slower pace does less work.

Stop if you feel chest pain, dizziness or unusual breathlessness. If you have a heart or joint condition, ask your doctor before you step.

Each step test has its own scoring, so do not mix their numbers. The Harvard Step Test Calculator scores a Physical Fitness Index from three recovery counts. The YMCA 3-Minute Step Test Calculator rates your one-minute recovery pulse against YMCA tables.

If you have no step, the Fitness Age Calculator estimates VO2peak from age, waist and resting heart rate instead.

I left these out because I couldn't trace them to a source I could open:

• Age and sex fitness bands such as poor, good or excellent for this test.
• An error range for men. No standard error for the men's equation was in the papers I read.
• Population-specific equations for India or Nepal. I only saw them quoted secondhand.
• Training plans. Nothing here is tied to a source I could open.

Still unverified: the textbook that first printed the men's equation, the exact women's coefficients in McArdle's Table 5 (I read them from a scanned copy and they match every later paper I checked), and the new equations in the two Chatterjee papers.