How to Run a Yo-Yo IR1/IR2 Test (Step-by-Step)
TL;DR. The Yo-Yo intermittent recovery test (IR1 and IR2) is a 20-meter shuttle test with a 10-second active recovery between shuttle pairs. It was designed by Jens Bangsbo at the University of Copenhagen in the mid-1990s to test the specific energy-system demands of football, rugby, hockey, and basketball, which sit between continuous running and pure interval work. The protocol below covers both IR1 (the test for moderate-fitness team sport athletes) and IR2 (the faster, harder version for highly trained players), with the setup, the cue handling, and the stop criteria for each.
Most bad Yo-Yo test results come from confusion about which version to run and from mishandling the 10-second active recovery. Players walk the recovery instead of jogging it, judges miss the second consecutive shuttle line by a generous half-meter, and IR1 candidates accidentally start on the IR2 audio. The instructions below assume you want a clean number that matches Bangsbo’s 2008 published norms in Sports Medicine and that you can compare honestly to your team’s previous testing rounds.
What do you actually need to run a Yo-Yo test?
A 20-meter measured lane plus a 5-meter recovery zone behind one of the end lines (25 meters of total floor space), the validated Yo-Yo IR1 or IR2 audio protocol, and a line judge. The 5-meter recovery zone is the difference between the Yo-Yo and the standard beep test, and it is the piece most setup mistakes happen around. You jog this 5-meter zone in 10 seconds, then run the next shuttle pair.
The 20-meter shuttle distance is the same as the beep test and assumes the same surface and marker discipline. Krustrup et al. validated the IR1 protocol in 2003 (Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise 35:697-705) on 17 elite male football players, and the IR2 validation followed in 2006 (Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise 38(9):1666-73) on 14 elite male football and handball players. Both validations assumed a measured 20-meter lane to within 10 centimeters. A 19-meter lane inflates your final level by 0.5 to 1.0 levels and the corresponding VO2 max estimate by 4 to 7 mL/kg/min.
For audio, the validated IR1 and IR2 protocols are available through Bangsbo’s published software and through several certified phone apps. The volume needs to carry across 25 meters in the test environment, which on a hard gym floor is straightforward and on an outdoor pitch is difficult. Outdoor team-sport testing usually uses a centrally placed speaker with wired backup, or individual headphones synchronized to the same start cue. Many AFL and English Premier League clubs use bone-conduction headsets for outdoor Yo-Yo testing to keep the cue audible without losing ambient awareness on the recovery jog.
How do you set up the shuttle and recovery zones?
Measure 20.0 meters along a flat surface. Mark the two ends with cones, tape, or chalk. Behind one of the end lines, mark a second line at 5 meters back. The 5-meter zone between those two parallel lines is the active recovery zone. The runner starts at the “near” line, runs to the far cone (20 meters away), runs back to the near line (the shuttle pair), then jogs through the 5-meter recovery zone, turns at the back marker, and is back at the start line in time for the next cue.
Surface choice follows the same rules as the standard beep test. A wooden gym floor, a synthetic indoor court, or a flat outdoor pitch in dry conditions are all fine. Concrete is brutal on the knees past level 17 on IR1 and is genuinely unsafe on IR2 because the recovery period is shorter and the impact stress accumulates. Avoid any surface that tilts: even a 0.5 percent grade shifts the result by roughly half a level on IR2 because the speed increments are tighter.
The line judge stands at the near end (the start line) and watches whether the runner makes it past the line before each shuttle cue. Make-or-miss calls should be unambiguous: any part of the foot on or past the line at the moment of the cue counts as a make. The judge also watches the recovery zone: a runner who walks the recovery instead of jogging it has invalidated that shuttle pair under the published protocol. Two consecutive misses ends the test. The standard beep test rule of “one warning, two outs” applies the same way here.
Should you run IR1 or IR2?
IR1 for recreational players, amateur club athletes, youth players, and anyone running their first Yo-Yo test. IR2 for elite or sub-elite team sport players who have run IR1 to a level of 18 or higher in the past 6 months. Running IR2 cold without prior IR1 results is a recipe for a 90-second test and a useless number. The protocols are not interchangeable, and the formulas are not interchangeable either.
The starting speeds tell the story. IR1 starts at 10 km/h and increments slowly across the first 8 levels, designed to take an average team-sport player to volitional exhaustion in 10 to 20 minutes. IR2 starts at 13 km/h and increments fast, designed to take an elite player to exhaustion in 5 to 15 minutes. Bangsbo, Iaia, and Krustrup published a clean comparison in their 2008 Sports Medicine review (Sports Medicine 38:37-51): the IR1 differentiates moderately trained from well-trained players, the IR2 differentiates well-trained from elite. For most readers of this site, IR1 is the right choice on the first run.
How should you warm up before the test?
Fifteen minutes of structured work, with an emphasis on neuromuscular priming because the Yo-Yo includes acceleration, deceleration, and turning on every shuttle pair. Five minutes of easy jogging at conversational pace, three minutes of dynamic mobility (leg swings, hip circles, ankle drills), four 20-meter shuttle pairs at progressively harder paces (matching the actual test pattern), then 90 seconds of standing rest. Skip the long static stretches. Static stretching held longer than 30 seconds reduces shuttle test performance by 2 to 4 percent according to Behm and Chaouachi’s 2011 European Journal of Applied Physiology review.
The four warm-up shuttle pairs are non-negotiable. They calibrate your deceleration and turn technique to the 20-meter lane you have today, and they prime the active recovery jog so you do not arrive at the start line with your heart rate already at 150 bpm. The Yo-Yo’s 10-second active recovery looks easy on paper and is a real piece of work past level 18 on IR1 or level 16 on IR2: jogging 10 meters in 10 seconds while gas-out is not a free ride. Practice it.
What is the right pacing strategy?
Match the cue, do not race it. The single biggest pacing mistake on the Yo-Yo is arriving at the line a full second early on the easy early levels, which feels controlled and burns the recovery you need in the late levels. Aim to arrive at the line a quarter-second to half-second before the cue. The 10-second recovery should be a relaxed jog, not a recovery sprint.
The shape of a clean IR1 test is roughly this. Levels 1 to 8 should feel comfortable, with the recovery jog feeling like a casual reset. Levels 9 to 13 should feel committed but sustainable, with the recovery starting to matter. Levels 14 to 17 are where the real fitness test happens, and the recovery jog needs to be deliberately controlled. Level 18 plus is elite territory: the recovery becomes part of the test rather than rest from it. On IR2, the same arc compresses into roughly half the time: levels 1 to 4 are warm-up feel, levels 5 to 13 are the test, level 14 plus is elite territory.
If you push the recovery jog into a near-sprint to “save” a missed shuttle, you have already lost the test. The recovery is part of the protocol design, not a generous gift you can spend. The cleanest IR1 results I have seen on amateur athletes come from players who treat the recovery as a deliberate, almost-walking pace until level 14 or 15.
When are you actually out?
When you miss two consecutive shuttle lines, or when you fail to complete the active recovery (you walked it or did not return to the start line by the next cue). One missed shuttle is a warning. Two in a row ends the test. Stop running, walk a slow shuttle to cool down, then have the line judge record your final level, your final shuttle count within that level, and your total distance covered.
The VO2 max formulas are different for each version. For IR1: VO2 max (mL/kg/min) = (IR1 distance in meters x 0.0084) + 36.4. For IR2: VO2 max (mL/kg/min) = (IR2 distance in meters x 0.0136) + 45.3. An IR1 distance of 2000 meters converts to roughly 53.2 mL/kg/min. An IR2 distance of 1000 meters converts to roughly 58.9 mL/kg/min. The Yo-Yo IR1 and IR2 calculator on this site runs both equations and adds the team-sport-position percentile bands published by Bangsbo 2008.
How accurate is the Yo-Yo test compared to a lab VO2 max?
Within plus or minus 3 to 5 mL/kg/min for elite players on the version they are trained against, within plus or minus 5 to 8 mL/kg/min for recreational players. The original Krustrup 2003 IR1 validation reported a correlation of 0.71 against lab-measured VO2 max on the 17 elite footballer cohort, with the test discriminating between moderate and high training status more cleanly than continuous running tests. The Krustrup 2006 IR2 paper reported a correlation of 0.74 against lab VO2 max on 14 elite players.
The Yo-Yo is the most football-specific of the four common field tests because of the recovery period mimicking the work-rest pattern of match play. It is also the most coach-validated: by 2024 every English Premier League and most La Liga, Bundesliga, and Serie A academies use Yo-Yo IR1 or IR2 as their entry-level cardio screen, and most AFL and NRL clubs in Australia use IR1 as the standard preseason test. The trade-off versus the continuous tests is sport specificity for a slightly higher pacing-judgment variance. The full ranking is in the alternative VO2 max testing methods piece, and the device-specific version of the Yo-Yo with haptic cues is in the Apple Watch Yo-Yo guide.
How should I think about my score?
Bangsbo’s 2008 reference values for IR1 distance covered: recreational male player around 700 to 1,200 meters, amateur club male 1,200 to 1,800 meters, semi-professional male 1,800 to 2,400 meters, elite professional male 2,400 to 3,000 meters. The recorded male top-tier Yo-Yo IR1 distance is roughly 3,840 meters (level 22.8) by AFL prospect Harry Grant at the 2020 Rookie Me combine. For female players, reference values shift down by roughly 30 to 40 percent: elite female footballers typically reach 1,200 to 1,800 meters.
The score is most useful as a within-individual tracking metric, not a between-individual benchmark. A 200-meter improvement on IR1 across an 8-week preseason block is meaningful and matches what Schmitz et al. 2018 (Frontiers in Physiology 9:870) reported in their systematic review of 47 Yo-Yo training studies. A 200-meter difference between two players is noise. The cross-test math also gets interesting: a Yo-Yo IR1 result that disagrees with the same player’s Cooper or beep test result by more than 5 mL/kg/min usually flags a pacing problem on one of the two tests, not a real fitness change. See the why VO2 max readings keep changing piece if your numbers are bouncing.
Frequently asked questions
IR1: 35 to 50 minutes door to door (15 min warm-up, 90 sec rest, 10 to 25 min test, 5 min cool-down, 3 min recording). IR2: 25 to 40 minutes total because the test itself is shorter (5 to 15 minutes for most players).
Yes, but the line judge is doing real work because the 10-second recovery is harder to self-monitor than the standard beep test. Solo testing on the Apple Watch with audio plus haptic cues is reliable up to level 17 on IR1. Past that an honest line judge starts to matter because fatigue blurs your judgment of whether you actually made each line.
IR1 for amateur clubs, youth squads, and any player who has not run Yo-Yo IR1 in the past 6 months. IR2 only for senior players who have already cleared level 18 on IR1. Bangsbo’s published guidance from 2008 is to default to IR1 unless the squad is sub-elite or higher.
Want the Yo-Yo IR1 and IR2 cued and judged without a separate audio file, a stopwatch, and a tester to call the line? Vo2 Maximizer runs the validated IR1 and IR2 protocols on your Apple Watch or iPhone, sends haptic taps for the shuttle and the active recovery, judges your line on the watch, and converts your distance to VO2 max using the Bangsbo 2008 formulas with the position-specific percentile band.