Taking an endurance test can ultimately help to improve your stamina! How? Endurance tests help to determine your current VO2 and Lactate threshold scores.
The endurance test is a well established route to measure how you improve your stamina as you exercise and train. It can also be used to find your maximum time to exhaustion, which can be particularly important for those who are trying to race in distance related events.
Aerobic Tests
If you've been working on cardio training, aerobic tests would be a good fitness assessment for you to perform. Some of the factors of fitness that aerobic tests will determine are VO2 max, lactate threshold and maximum time to exhaustion.
Regular cycle tests are a great way to determine your fitness and skill level. It is important to ensure you stretch out your quad muscles before performing cycle tests however, as these are the muscles that will predominately be worked and therefore need to be loose and warm.
Doing some heart rate tests will not only allow you to see how well your endurance training is progressing but also allow you to determine recovery ability. Generally, the faster the beats per minute reading returns to normal after exercise, the better condition you are in.
There are a variety of different running tests that you can perform. Some of the most commonly used ones will either aim to measure your maximum speed and therefore VO2 max or else your aerobic endurance. Distance athletes will be most interested in the latter while sprint athletes the former.
One of the best things about treadmill tests is that they are only going to assess your pure fitness level. Since you do not need to fight against wind resistance or an uneven terrain, it is only your pure physical abilities that will be measured.
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