
Bush and collecting data on the fitness levels of more than 100,000 people.
12 minutes actors full#
He is 86 and still works full time at Cooper Clinic in Dallas, seeing patients as famous as George W. When he speaks, Cooper sounds like a mix between drill sergeant and historian, reeling off dates and results from decades-old studies and rarely stopping for air. “I would never have predicted it,” Cooper says, reflecting on the surprising longevity of his test. This month marks the 50th anniversary of the Cooper Test’s publication, and in that time the 12-minute run has been used by championship World Cup, NFL, and college basketball teams, FIFA referees, police recruits, and thousands upon thousands of high school and amateur athletes worldwide, many of whom, like high school me, have no idea how the test came to be and what makes it an ideal conditioning tool.

He’s less known for creating the 12-minute run, or, as others call it, the Cooper Test. Kenneth Cooper.Ĭooper has achieved international fame for inspiring the modern exercise movement through his book Aerobics. And all of the pain stemmed from an invention by Dr. I was enduring the same torture as Pele did as a soccer star, as Michael Jordan did as a college basketball player. The 12-minute run was and is perhaps the world’s most effective and popular conditioning test. I assumed for years my coach had concocted this excruciating workout. Whether you were one of the fastest or slowest runners, the 12-minute run’s induced misery did not discriminate. When Wilson shouted into a megaphone to stop, even the well-conditioned few were hunched over and heaving. The local police had their training center atop a hill nearby, and, below it, our track felt like a jail, runners trapped, splayed across the lanes, many walking after a few minutes. My high school coach, Greg Wilson, would bring dozens of students to a local track in our Kansas City suburb at 6 a.m., click his stopwatch and force us to run around the oval, lap after lap, as many as we could finish.

We always did the 12-minute run on the third day of cross country practice, a sure sign the fun of summer had ended.
