The reliability of aerobic capacity (VO2max) testing in adolescent girls

Despite the fact that our subjects were naive regarding the test procedures, it appears that aerobic fitness testing using an incremental treadmill protocol is extremely reliable in adolescent girls. In addition, day-to-day variability of VO2max in our subjects averaged less than 5%, which is similar to results obtained with adults (Katch, Sady, & Freedson, 1982). Finally, it was most encouraging to find that a single VO2max test trial resulted in high reliability coefficients. This finding should provide a great deal of confidence to investigators who are performing aerobic fitness tests on large numbers of subjects where multiple testing is neither practical nor cost-effective.