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Catalyst Performance

Pillar 02 of 04

Cardiorespiratory Fitness

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

Recovery clockT+0:00
Heart rate recovery-0 bpm

Why it matters

The most studied predictor in exercise science

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 AssessmentWhat we measure

The report

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.

Test 02

Heart Rate Recovery

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 prescription

  • AA conditioning base built into the week, not bolted on
  • BIntensity progressed from your own recovery data
  • CRe-tested at every Checkpoint: same steps, same minute

The score

Equal weight, by design. No pillar can carry another. Four scores combine into one Healthspan Score out of 10.

Next · Pillar 03Stability
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