The Lifesaving Benefits of High VO2Max: More Than Just Numbers

Have you heard a lot of talk about V_O2Max lately?

Do you have any idea what it is?

Most people don’t, and frankly I think most people shouldn’t need to know anything about it.

That said, since you might be hearing more and more about it, I thought it might be useful to spend some time describing what it is, why so many people are talking about it, and what its impact is for you and your health goals.

V₀₂Max is the maximum amount of oxygen you can consume.

Pretty straightforward right?

Yes, it’s not a complicated measure, but it also doesn’t seem very important when it comes to the average person’s goals of optimizing their health, body composition, and longevity.

Turns out though, that people who have sub-optimal V_O2Max numbers tend to be quite unhealthy and don’t live as long compared to those whose numbers are optimal.

In fact, having a high V_O2max was associated with 41%-53% lower risk of premature death (Cardiorespiratory Fitness Is a Strong and Consistent Predictor of Morbidity and Mortality Among Adults: An Overview of Meta-Analyses Representing Over 20.9 Million Observations From 199 Unique Cohort Studies, n.d.)!

In addition, having a high V_O2max was associated with a lower risk of having high blood pressure, developing heart failure, stroke, atrial fibrillation (an irregular heartbeat), dementia, kidney disease, depression, and type 2 diabetes.

That’s quite the list!

Even if you have an existing medical condition like cardiovascular disease or hypertension, having a high V_O2max appears to be protective as well reducing the risk of dying of the existing condition.

A question that comes up often is whether a high V_O2Max makes you healthy or if a high V_O2Max is just a byproduct of being healthy?

In my opinion having a high V_O2Max improves health and is not a side effect of being healthy.

Let me explain why.

There are several components of our physiology that contribute to our V_O2max, namely your lungs, heart, muscles, vascular system, and brain. You will notice that many of these organs are related to the diseases that are reduced by having a high V_O2Max. In order to improve your V_O2Max your body must improve the performance of these bodily systems and by doing so will decrease the risk of developing medical conditions related to them.

If not it just wouldn’t be possible to utilize that much oxygen because there would be a limitation.

Since it appears V_O2Max is important in optimizing your health, the question then becomes how can we improve and measure it?

First let’s start with how you measure V_O2Max.

The gold standard for measuring V_O2Max will require most people making a trip to an exercise lab. Once there you need to do an all out exercise test, usually performed on a bike or treadmill. During this test the intensity of the exercise gradually increases to the point where you reach failure and you can’t run any faster or peddle any harder. To add to the pain of this test, you usually need to do this by wearing a mask over your nose and mouth to capture the amount of oxygen you are consuming and carbon dioxide you are exhaling.

Having done this test several times I can tell you it’s not exactly fun and frankly it’s not something that is accessible to most people.

Luckily we have other options for measuring V_O2Max that are more accessible, but are less accurate. Despite them being potentially less accurate they are still pretty good and therefore useful in determining if your V_O2Max is at a good level.

If you are an avid runner you might consider doing something called a Cooper Run Test. The protocol for this is pretty simple. All you need is a way of timing yourself and measuring how far you ran. Most phones and watches people have today can fit the bill, but you could also go to a track and use an old school stopwatch.

Once you warm up, what you are going to do is run as fast as you can for 12 minutes and measure how far you run in those 12 minutes. Then you can use a calculator like this one to calculate your V_O2Max.

Another option is to find a Concept 2 Rower and do a 2000m row as fast as you can. Concept 2 has developed a calculator based on your results to come up with an estimate of your V_O2Max. I have done this several times and it lines up with my V_O2Max from the lab measurement, so for me it appears to be pretty accurate.

Probably the most accessible method to measure V_O2Max is to use the YMCA Step Test. To perform this test you will need a 12 inch step, a timer, a metronome, and a way of measuring your heart rate. The metronome can easily be found for free online. Measuring your heart rate can be done manually or you can use a heart rate strap.

To perform the test you are going to set the metronome to 96 beats per minute and for each beat you will step one foot up, then the other, then you will step one foot, down then the other foot down and you will repeat this for 3 minutes. At the end of 3 minutes you sit down in a chair and measure your heart rate for 1 minute. At the end of the 1 minute you get your heart rate and then look up what your vo2max is here.

Now that you know where you stand from a V_O2Max perspective you are probably wondering if your VO2Max is adequate or not?

Some of the links above have charts that will tell you where you stand but if not here is a chart.

https://www.concept2.com/indoor-rowers/training/calculators/vo2max-calculator

If you are below average for your age and sex you have some work to do.

So how do you improve your V_O2Max?

Cardiovascular exercise is going to be the most effective way to see improvements in your V_O2Max.

You may have seen many people advocating specific protocols for cardiovascular exercise to get the greatest improvements in V_O2Max. Most of these protocols involve doing very hard intervals of 3-6 minutes long. Let me assure you that these do work, but they are not fun. And if you are someone with a poor V_O2Max it’s not where I suggest you start.

The reason being because you can gain a lot (besides just improvements in V_O2Max) by doing far less intense exercise.

When I have clients who need to improve their V_O2Max I have them start by doing low intensity exercise since most of them have been lacking in that area. And guess what? They see MASSIVE improvements in their V_O2Max, and they don’t have to suffer through intense intervals.

I am not going to rehash my entire cardiovascular fitness approach because I have already written about it before. It is a 7 post series that is worth a read if your V_O2Max is not up to par.

Should You Be Doing Cardio?

How Cardio Transforms Your Body!

What’s Better, Easy Or Hard Cardio?

Your Exercise Prescription For Cardio Exercise

The Role Of High Intensity Cardio

Your High Intensity Cardio Prescription

Why Black Hole Cardio Is Not A Bad Thing

Now I am going to ruffle some feathers because I actually think that MOST people do not need to know what their V_O2Max is!

Knowing the number is not terribly important when it comes to someone being healthy. Plenty of people lived a long time and had great lives without knowing what their V_O2Max is.

Here is a simple way to know if your V_O2Max is up to par….are you doing any kind of cardiovascular exercise and if so does any of that cardiovascular exercise get you out of breath?

Are you walking?

Do you hike?

Do you swim?

Do you ride a bike?

Do you row?

Do you run?

I think you get the point.

If you are getting your 7-10 thousand steps a day, you do easy cardiovascular work like going for a hike or a nice long bike ride or going for a run, and occasionally you do very hard intense cardiovascular exercise you likely have a V_O2Max that is pretty good.

If all you do is walk then you might have some work to do. If all you do is long slow cardio, then you could probably benefit from some shorter more intense cardio.

But like I said above if you are not doing any cardio at all then just walking is going to improve your V_O2Max. From there you can do some long slow cardio and that will improve it further. And once you spend some time doing that you can add in the intense stuff.

At that point you are probably doing good enough from a V_O2Max point of view.

It is easy to get caught up in all the hype around things like V_O2Max. While I agree V_O2Max is important, we don’t need to go so far down the rabbit hole that it’s overwhelming, confusing, and unattainable for most people. If you want to gather data and quantify things, great, I do too, but you don’t have to and it’s not necessary. My goal is to give you an approach that works for you in order for you to reach your goals and for most people the nerdy quantification and protocols are overkill for what they are looking to achieve.

I love breaking down the science and translating it to actionable protocols the everyday person can put to work. I do this weekly with the content I put out on my newsletter. So if you enjoyed the information I presented in this blog post sign up for my newsletter using the form below and I will email each week with information you can put to work in order to reach your goals.

References

Cardiorespiratory fitness is a strong and consistent predictor of morbidity and mortality among adults: an overview of meta-analyses representing over 20.9 million observations from 199 unique cohort studies. (n.d.). PubMed. Retrieved April 29, 2024, from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38599681/