Andy Galpin | Increasing VO2 Max for Better Endurance & Health @drandygalpin | Uploaded June 2024 | Updated October 2024, 38 minutes ago.
Increasing your VO2 max is crucial because it enhances your body's ability to utilize oxygen efficiently, leading to improved endurance, better overall cardiovascular health, and enhanced performance in both daily activities and athletic endeavors. From a lifespan perspective, it dramatically reduces mortality risk and does not appear to have an upper limit - so the benefits do not taper off as you get more fit. The more, the better here.
With appropriate training, nutrition, sleep, and stress management, a 30-50% improvement in VO2 max is possible within 6-12 months, though the rate of increase slows as fitness improves.
Some published research even found that highly trained individuals can increase by 10-20% after a year, while untrained individuals might achieve this in 4-6 months.
Please keep in mind how 'percent changes' work mathematically. Let me give you a real-life example of two middle-aged females whom I just started coaching last week. Client 1 is in moderately decent cardiovascular fitness, so I'd expect her to go from 33 ml/kg/min to 38 ml/kg/min in the next 6 months — which would be an increase of 5 ml/kg/min and represent 15%. That's a reasonable expectation and something I've personally seen in our clients countless times. However, client 2 is a former elite athlete and is still very fit. She's currently at 56 ml/kg/min, so increasing her by 15% would take her to 64 ml/kg/min. That's possible but not likely. Frankly, anything over 60 ml/kg/min would be an enormous jump.
You can learn more about how and why to strengthen your heart and cardiovascular fitness, which is covered in Episode 1 of Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin.
Increasing your VO2 max is crucial because it enhances your body's ability to utilize oxygen efficiently, leading to improved endurance, better overall cardiovascular health, and enhanced performance in both daily activities and athletic endeavors. From a lifespan perspective, it dramatically reduces mortality risk and does not appear to have an upper limit - so the benefits do not taper off as you get more fit. The more, the better here.
With appropriate training, nutrition, sleep, and stress management, a 30-50% improvement in VO2 max is possible within 6-12 months, though the rate of increase slows as fitness improves.
Some published research even found that highly trained individuals can increase by 10-20% after a year, while untrained individuals might achieve this in 4-6 months.
Please keep in mind how 'percent changes' work mathematically. Let me give you a real-life example of two middle-aged females whom I just started coaching last week. Client 1 is in moderately decent cardiovascular fitness, so I'd expect her to go from 33 ml/kg/min to 38 ml/kg/min in the next 6 months — which would be an increase of 5 ml/kg/min and represent 15%. That's a reasonable expectation and something I've personally seen in our clients countless times. However, client 2 is a former elite athlete and is still very fit. She's currently at 56 ml/kg/min, so increasing her by 15% would take her to 64 ml/kg/min. That's possible but not likely. Frankly, anything over 60 ml/kg/min would be an enormous jump.
You can learn more about how and why to strengthen your heart and cardiovascular fitness, which is covered in Episode 1 of Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin.
