Bleep test
Welcome to the Peak Performance forums!
To contribute to the discussions please either register here for free or login.
To access 20 years worth of Peak Performance downloads, articles, workouts as well as the locked members only forum click here to take a trial membership for $1.97
Useful Links: Quick Start Guide, Forum Guidelines, Terms and Conditions,Recent Activity…
18th Dec '11, 8:44pm
Hi guys, Im new on here so hello.
I was wondering if anyone can help me out with a question. My 11 year old son is a county level swimmer and recently as part of his training programme he and his brother completed a bleep test (this was over 15m shuttle runs and not the 20m one). My 8 year old recorded a score of level 12.1 and my 11 year old recorded a score of level 15.1. I was wondering if anyone knows how to work out what there VO2 max is. I have found plently of conversion tables for the 20m bleep test but cant find any for the 15m test. Any help would be appreciated.
Ta
Stu
From Facebook - Mitchell
19th Dec '11, 11:15am
From Facebook - Mitchell replies, 'No one does the 15m one, that's why!!!'
Bleep Test
19th Dec '11, 5:06pm
Hi Stu,
Welcome to pponline.
You son's sound if they are doing really well with their training so all credit to you for getting them involved in sport young which hopefully will mean they won't want to join the drinking and smoking crowd as they get older.
Plenty of people use the 15 meter bleep test, the fire service and police to name just two.
There does seem to be a lack of data out there on V02 max conversion charts as you have rightly pointed out. However one way around this would be to have them undertake the Cooper 12 minute run test at a local track. You should be able to find details of how to do this test which is quite straight forward, but any problems give me a shout and I'll gladly send you the information. The Cooper test has been shown to return very accurate estimates of V02 max time and time again.
I would try not to put too much emphasis on their V02 max results though, What is more important is to ensure they are training in a sport specific way that will improve their swimming results, and I'm afraid to say the days of endless high volume low intensity swimming has gone when it comes to increasing their swimming specific fitness. Unless of course they are planning to participate in ultra endurance swimming events in the future.
Take a trawl though this site and I am sure you will find loads of useful information specific to swimming which can only serve to help you sons get the best out of their training including nutrition, rest, strength and flexibility work to name just a few, whilst remembering that they should be allowed to live and enjoy life too so the odd take away a couple of times a week will certainly do them no harm.
In fact Michael Phelps nutrition during his last Olympics consisting mainly of take aways as he was burning in excess of 10,000kcal per day and whilst not ideal, it was the only way for him to ensure he was putting in enough energy to replace such vast energy expenditure from training and competing at such a high level. Remember if you son's are undertaking high intensity training the most important thing is to ensure that they are taking in enough carbohydrates to aid both recovery and adaptation.
Best of luck.
Simon
Simon Vincent
Performance and Nutrition Consultant
Body Bullet Dynamics
Aberdare
South Wales
www.totalcyclingperformance.co.uk
I had a search for 'bleep
19th Dec '11, 8:23pm
I had a search for 'bleep test' and I came up with this page of topics , so it's obviously come up before. I'm loath to link to any specific topic as I must admit I don't really know what a bleep test is (it sounds intriguing and I'd love to know more though!) but perhaps you will find something useful there?
Other than that, hello and welcome!
I had a search for bleep
19th Dec '11, 10:10pm
Hi ElectronBlue,
I am shocked to hear that you were never put through a bleep test at school by a PE who liked to see the children wince with pain as they tried to get either 15 or 20 meters in a shuttle style run, and hit the marker before the dreaded bleep came especially as each level they get faster! The 20 meter one was a weekly occurrence at our school as it allowed the PE to just shout at us and not have to join in.
It really is a great test that sorts the men from the boys, as it is as much about mental strength as well as physical fitness. I am proud to say that, all be it now over 20 years ago, I reached level 18 and in doing so beat my not very happy newish PE teacher in the process. What made the situation worse from his point of view was that he was an ex-marine.
After that day he however had did find a reason to finally respect me, after hating me for a full year because I would not play rugby and had always told my PE teachers that my size and fitness at the time was down to nothing more than good genetics and a healthy dose of farm labouring.
Try the test for yourself. One thing for sure if you repeat it on a regular basis, say a few times a week it won't half improve your aerobic and anaerobic fitness levels.
In my own work I have witnessed first hand half the players from a local rugby team needing to be randomly hit with a bleep test to check their fitness levels, otherwise they don't turn up for training so that should tell you a little bit about how hard the test can be. Or it could just be that local Welsh rugby teams are not as tough as they once used to be LOL!
Kind regards
Simon