Three-minute step test
Fitness from how high your pulse is just after three minutes of stepping. Fitter people lived longer.
How to do it
This is hard work for three minutes. Skip it if you have heart or lung disease, chest pain or breathlessness with effort, dizziness, balance trouble, or knee or hip problems, and stop if you feel unwell. Use a stable step beside a wall or rail, never a chair that could tip.
- Find a sturdy step or box about 16 inches (41 cm) high, beside a wall or rail.
- Start the beat and step up, up, down, down in time with it, one foot after the other. It sets 22 steps a minute for women and 24 for men.
- Start the 3-minute timer and keep to the beat until it ends.
- Then stand still and take your pulse from 5 to 20 seconds after stopping, with your phone's camera or by counting at your wrist.
Your result
Choose one: the stepping speed differs for men and women.
Nothing you enter leaves this page unless you save your result.
What the research found
The Queens College step test estimates VO2 max, the most oxygen your body can use, from your pulse just after stepping. The fitter you are, the less your pulse climbs. In 30 young men, its estimates closely matched VO2 max measured on an exercise bike. In 40 young women the original formula agreed poorly, so the researchers wrote a new one. Treat the number as rough. Fitness itself is one of the strongest signs of how long people live. Across 33 studies of 102,980 people, each step up in fitness (one MET, a unit of effort) went with a 13% lower risk of death. People with low fitness (under 7.9 METs) had a 70% higher risk than those with high fitness (10.9 METs or more).
Studied in: College students (the step test); 102,980 people in 33 studies (fitness and death rates).
- Chatterjee S et al. Validity of Queen's College step test for use with young Indian men. Br J Sports Med. 2004;38(3):289-91. PubMed
- Chatterjee S, Chatterjee P, Bandyopadhyay A. Validity of Queen's College Step Test for estimation of maximum oxygen uptake in female students. Indian J Med Res. 2005;121(1):32-5. PubMed
- Kodama S et al. Cardiorespiratory fitness as a quantitative predictor of all-cause mortality and cardiovascular events in healthy men and women: a meta-analysis. JAMA. 2009;301(19):2024-35. PubMed