Test 01
3-Minute Step Test
A fixed cadence, a fixed height, three minutes. Repeatable every Checkpoint without a lab, a mask or a metabolic cart.
Catalyst Performance
Loading
Pillar 02 of 04
Every organ you own is downstream of your heart. This pillar measures the engine that supplies all of them.
An animated heart trace beats across the screen. As you scroll, the heart rate recovers from 168 down towards 121 over a simulated minute, the way it is measured after the step test.
Three minutes of stepping raises the question.
The minute after answers it.
How fast your heart recovers predicts how long everything else lasts.
Illustrative
Why it matters
Cardiorespiratory fitness is the single most studied predictor of lifespan in the exercise-science literature. In a cohort of 122,007 adults, low fitness carried a greater mortality risk than smoking.
The step test gives us the signal without a lab: heart rate recovery, the speed at which your heart returns towards baseline after work. It is a read on the autonomic system that runs everything you never think about.
Low cardiorespiratory fitness out-predicts smoking as a mortality risk
Mandsager et al., 2018 · JAMA Network Open · n = 122,007
The Catalyst Healthspan Assessment · What we measure
Test 01
A fixed cadence, a fixed height, three minutes. Repeatable every Checkpoint without a lab, a mask or a metabolic cart.
Test 02
The drop in the minute after. Faster is younger: recovery speed is the autonomic system showing its hand.
Scored against age-and-sex norms
25% of your Healthspan Score
Re-measured every 16 weeks at the Checkpoint
How we train it
The score
Equal weight, by design. No pillar can carry another. Four scores combine into one Healthspan Score out of 10.
All four pillars, 60 minutes, Manulife Tower.
Or preview the system in 3 minutes with the free Healthspan Audit