Beep Test World Record

The highest beep test score with a named source behind it is level 17, shuttle 1. Two people are credited with it. One of the two has a paper trail: Marek Schirnack of the Royal New Zealand Navy, whose run was written up in Navy Today in December 2021 as the first level 17 in the Navy's history. The other, former AFL player Jose Romero, appears on every records list, but the Western Bulldogs page cited as proof of it does not mention the score at all.

A 17.1 is 172 shuttles and 3,440 meters, finishing at 16.5 km/h. Set that against the best beep test ever run at the AFL Draft Combine, which is one of the few settings where the test was administered under league supervision and the result published: Billy Hartung's 16.6 in 2013.

Scores above level 18 turn up in plenty of blog posts, and none of them survive a look at the source. The most-repeated one, a 19.2 credited to Swedish international Håkan Mild, is flagged by the site that collects these as probably a yo-yo test result rather than a beep test result.

Not for an individual score. Guinness World Records has one bleep test title and it is a group one: most participants in a bleep test, set by 941 people at the Army Foundation College in Harrogate on 14 December 2017.

No governing body owns the test either. It came out of a 1988 paper by Luc Léger's group at the University of Montreal and then spread through armies, police forces, schools and sports clubs, each running it their own way. Nobody was ever put in charge of the numbers, so a beep test record is only as reliable as the person who wrote it down.

Ask around and you will hear that David Beckham or Lance Armstrong finished the beep test. Both stories trace back to one place: an "unconfirmed rumors" note on topendsports, which says outright that it is very unlikely and that the site does not believe anyone has completed the test. Neither name comes with a test date or a tester. Treat them as folklore.

The level 17 credited to Sebastian Coe, Steve Nash and Lee Gong Dook sits in a softer category. Those scores get repeated on records lists without a date or an administrator attached, and a rival compilation moves all three into its rumors column. Neil Back is a step firmer, since the claim comes from his own autobiography, though that still means self-reported.

The highest women's figures on the same list are 15.0, credited to New Zealand hockey internationals Suzie Muirhead and Diana Weavers from a Black Sticks testing session, and a 13.8 from Monique Hollick at the 2016 AFL women's talent search. Both come from the compilation rather than from a league or federation document.

The protocol runs out before the runners do, which puts a hard cap on any record. The 20-level table this site's app and audio use ends here:

The PACER test used in US schools is the same 20-meter shuttle run, so the claims above are the ones that apply to it. Two things change. Results get recorded as laps rather than as a level and shuttle, and FitnessGram's schedule starts half a km/h slower than the 8.5 km/h here and carries one level further.

On the 20-level schedule this site uses, the maximum is 231 laps. The Cooper Institute's manual gives the PACER 21 levels without printing a lap total for them, and the tables that circulate put that ceiling at 247 laps, which is where the higher figure comes from. Neither number has ever been reached in a documented run.

School and district PACER records are a different thing again. They are counted by a teacher, kept on a gym wall or a district spreadsheet, and checked by nobody outside the building. A lap count that wins your school is worth being proud of, but it is not comparable to anything and it is not a world record. If you want to know where a lap count actually sits, the PACER scores page has the Healthy Fitness Zone standards by age and sex, and the PACER test guide covers how the lap counting works.

The AFL Draft Combine is the best window into this, because it tested the country's top draft prospects every year and published the results. Across that whole run the beep test record was Hartung's 16.6 in 2013, which beat Bradley Hill's 16.1 from 2011. Two scores over 16 in a decade of testing elite prospects says more about the ceiling than any leaderboard. The AFL dropped the beep test from the combine in 2017 and replaced it with the yo-yo test, so that record is closed for good.

"Elite score" figures by sport are mostly squad averages passed around without a citation, so this page will not print a table of them. For what different sports test and the ranges that come with sources, see the beep test by sport page and the soccer benchmarks. To see how your own score compares with people your age rather than with a Navy record, use the scores by age tables.

Reading about level 17 tells you nothing about your own number, and finding that out takes about ten minutes for most people. The free beep test app on this site runs the full 20-level protocol in your browser with the beeps, level calls and a lap count, no signup. Once you have a number, the training guide covers what actually moves it.