Does VO2 max matter to mid life athletes?
Have you checked your VO2 max lately? What’s the trend? Holding firm or declining? Surely that’s just a number for pro athletes, why does it even matter to mid life athletes?
Well it turns out that VO2 max is a great indicator of metabolic health, which refers to how well your body converts food into energy and uses it efficiently. VO2 max is a measure of your aerobic capacity, which is your body's ability to use oxygen to produce energy. Studies have shown that people with higher VO2 max scores are less likely to develop metabolic syndrome, a cluster of risk factors that includes high blood pressure, high blood sugar, high cholesterol, and excess belly fat. Metabolic syndrome is a major risk factor for heart disease, stroke, and type 2 diabetes.
Some of the mechanisms by which VO2 max is linked to metabolic health, include:
Improved insulin sensitivity: People with higher VO2 max scores tend to have better insulin sensitivity, which means that their cells are more responsive to insulin and are better able to take up glucose from the bloodstream. This is important for preventing type 2 diabetes and other metabolic diseases.
Reduced inflammation: VO2 max is inversely correlated with inflammation markers such as C-reactive protein (CRP). Inflammation is a major driver of many chronic diseases, including heart disease, stroke, and type 2 diabetes.
Improved mitochondrial function: Mitochondria are the energy factories of the cell. VO2 max is associated with improved mitochondrial efficiency, which means that cells are better able to produce energy.
It turns out VO2 max is also a good predictor of longevity. People with higher VO2 max scores tend to live longer and have a lower risk of death from all causes. And if you’re still ‘competing’ working on your VO2 max is pretty critical to getting the most out of your aerobic capacity.
What’s the best workout for VO2 max?
We know that interval training improves VO2 max, but it’s been long debated whether that should be short, intense busts or longer, not quite all out intervals. Now a team of researchers from Norway think they may have the answer. They did a trial with randomised 48 aerobically well-trained men (23 ± 3 years) to three commonly applied interval protocols, one with high aerobic intensity (HIIT) and two with high absolute intensity (sprint interval training; SIT). The sessions looked like this:
HIIT: 4 × 4 min at ~95% maximal aerobic speed (MAS) with 3 min active breaks.
SIT: 8 × 20 s at ~150% MAS with 10 s passive breaks.
SIT: 10 × 30 s at ~175% MAS with 3.5 min active breaks
Turns out that VO2 increased more following the HIT workout, which also produced a larger stroke volume. Perhaps not surprisingly given these stats that HIT also produced the biggest improvement in long distance endurance performance.
There’s a ‘but’ for us mid life athletes
The clue is in the control group the researchers used - men aged around 23. Like many of these research studies they aren’t done using mid life athletes and you can’t just take it and apply it. It’s just not sustainable for us to do regular VO2 max sessions at 95% MAS (which equates roughly to c90% max HR). Mid life athletes should be looking at year round activity and therefore a continuous cycle. It’s important to then consider the costs and benefits of different types of training. If the training is too intensive/fast, the cost of the session/the total load, will increase. This often leads to increased recovery time, as well as greater risk of injury/disease etc. We know that as we get older we also need to factor in greater recovery time, so training at the right intensity becomes really important. Correct intensity = lowest possible cost to achieve optimal outcome.
It’s much more sustainable for mid life athletes to drop into what is typically called ‘tempo’ zone or at your anaerobic threshold which falls approx between 80-85% max HR. Basically you want to aim to train at a workload where there is an equilibrium between the production and elimination of blood lactate. In other words, the training intensity should not cause lactate to "accumulate", which would lead to a gradual reduction of the workload over time. The benefits are:
Increased VO2 capacity
Shorter recovery time
Allows for a larger, continuous training volume
And finally….
Remember these interval sessions should not be the bulk of your training. Most of your training (c80-90%) should be at low intensity. We’re only talking about the last 10% here.