Is VO2 Max Overrated? The Truth About This Popular Fitness Test

Let’s talk about VO2 max—a laboratory cardiovascular performance test that began rising to prominence in the mainstream medical, fitness, and biohacking communities in the 2010’s as an excellent way to measure general cardiovascular health, disease risk, and longevity potential.

It’s great to see the integration of performance-oriented metrics into wellness and medicine, and in this episode, I tell you all about VO2 max, its ability to predict your longevity, why some say it’s a superior way of predicting longevity, as well as why it can, in some ways, be overrated.

In this episode, I discuss all aspects of the VO2 max test—what it is, what it means, how to train for it, and how it rose to prominence, despite being a key performance metric for endurance athletes to predict competitive potential for decades.

I explain how the VO2 max test works (by measuring your amount of oxygen usage as the test gets increasingly harder), why most cardiologists are now touting VO2 max as superior to anything found in bloodwork, EKGs, and other routine screenings, the insights about your health that you can learn from taking the test, why the VO2 max test can be overrated, why the performance metric Running Economy is considered a better predictor of competitive success than VO2 max in elite running circles, the reason why VO2 max scores vary between men and women, and more!

 

TIMESTAMPS:

VO2 Max is a fantastic marker for overall health and longevity status. It measures the maximum amount of oxygen you can consume per minute when performing near maximum effort. [00:46]

A low VO2 Max is a huge red flag for your being fit. [05:46]

Once you get your VO2 Max up to a good level, it ceases to be an important measurement. [07:42]

Rather than go to the strenuous Four by Four workout, Brad recommends putting your time in at a comfortable heart rate to build your aerobic system. [08:41]

What is a good VO2 Max? [11:33]

There is a way to prolong a long healthy life and that is to avoid the nutrient deficient junk foods and move your body frequently. [19:36]

Texas A&M did a great study to measure the performances of 50 year olds running the mile. If males were unable to break 12 minutes and females unable to break 13 minutes, they were at high risk. [22:14]

 

LINKS:

• Brad Kearns.com
• B.rad’s Superfruits
• B.rad’s Shopping Page 
• B.rad’s Whey Protein Superfuel
• Born to Walk

 

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