March 11, 2016

This week many of you participated in the dreaded beep test. Bravo! to those of you who went through with it, because calling it a challenge is definitely an understatement. Below is a video that explains everything you need to know about the test.

At Blue Lion Fitness we call it the Beep Test. Across the fitness community it can be referred to as the Beep Test, Bleep Test, Pacer Test, Leger-Test, or as the video below calls it, the multi-stage fitness test. These terms are all synonymous.

In case you didn’t want to watch the video (you’re wrong and you should watch it), you can find the answers you’re looking for in the written word.

What is the Beep Test?

The test is built to test the fitness of the athletes involved in running it. It involves running 20 meters back-and-forth continuously. The runs are synchronized with a pre-recorded audio which plays beeps (hence the “beep test”) at set intervals. As the test continues, the interval between each successive beep decreases. Therefor the athletes have to run faster to make it to one end of the 20 meters before the beep sounds. You stop the test when you can no longer reach 20 meters before the beep sounds and you complete your score.

What’s a good score?

This is a tricky question that everyone wants an answer to. The beep test tests the VO2 level (the maximum rate of oxygen consumption as measured during incremental exercise, reflecting the aerobic physical fitness of the individual) of an athlete, but it does not typically take into account age. The below chart does however take into account gender: