Yo-Yo IR1: football's fitness exam
Two cones twenty metres apart, a set of beeps that get faster, and ten seconds of recovery between efforts. The Yo-Yo IR1 is how football measures match fitness — and you can run the full protocol yourself.
How the test works
The Yo-Yo Intermittent Recovery Test Level 1 is a shuttle test: run 20 metres out and 20 metres back in time with audio beeps, then take a 10-second active recovery walk around a cone before the next shuttle. The required speed climbs level by level, from a jog at 10 km/h to over 18 km/h at the top of the 23-level protocol. Miss the beep twice and the test ends; your score is the level — equivalently, the total distance — you reached.
What it actually measures
The stop-start format is the point. Unlike a continuous beep test, the Yo-Yo IR1 measures your ability to perform repeated high-intensity efforts with incomplete recovery — accelerating, decelerating, turning, and going again. That's the physical signature of football, and it's why the test correlates with high-intensity distance covered in real matches and doubles as a solid VO2 max proxy.
The institutional test, democratized
Pro and college squads run the Yo-Yo at pre-season, mid-season, and after injuries — it's cheap, standardized, and brutally honest. Amateurs almost never run it, not because it's hard to do, but because someone has to administer it: the audio protocol, the level tracking, the record-keeping. That's precisely the infrastructure an app can replace.
Benchmarks
| Level reached | Roughly |
|---|---|
| 14–15 | Solid recreational player |
| 16–17 | Strong amateur / semi-pro range |
| 18–20 | Professional standard |
| 21+ | Elite — international midfielder territory |
Run it properly
- Measure the course honestly: 20 m out, cone 5 m behind the start line for the recovery walk. Flat, grippy surface.
- Come in fresh — 48 hours after your last hard session — and warm up thoroughly; the test starts gently but ends maximal.
- Pace nothing. The beeps pace you; your only job is to keep making the line.
- Record the level, the date, and the conditions. Re-test every 8–12 weeks under the same conditions.
Peakify runs the full 23-level Yo-Yo IR1: audio pacing, automatic level tracking, and a result gauge that files every attempt in your history. The test the academies run, from your phone and two cones.
Endurance measured — now for power: the vertical jump.