The purposes of the study was to test the accuracy of athletic VO2max prediction in the high and the low level of physical fitness athletes from different equations.
Fifty college athletes volunteer to participate the 12-min run, then pick the best 10 as the high physical fitness group(HG), while the last 10 as the low level of physical fitness group (LG). Both two groups participated the Bruce treadmill VO2max test (BTVT). Two-way ANOVA was used to test the prediction accuracy from the different VO2max predicted equations in HG and LG. Newman-Kuel posthoc comparison was used to test the different prediction accuracy between two equations. α level was set at.05.The finding were as follows:
1. Hwang's (1996b) equation can be predicted 57.76%, 44.89% (P＜.05) athletic VO2max in HG and LG, respectively. This indicating the Hwang's (1996b) equation is better predication in high level physical fitness athletes than that of low level physical fitness athletes.
2. No significant different in predicted HG VO2max was found between the Hwang's (1996b) and the Lin et al. (1984); however, a significant underestimation was found in the Cooper's (1968).
3. Hwang's (1996b) equation can be accurate predicted LG, however, Lin et al. (1984) and Cooper's equations are significant underestimation of LG VO2max.
Therefore, we recommended to use Hwang's (1996b) equation to predict athletic VO2max, especially in high level of physical fitness athletes if using the 12-minute run as a test method.
