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TRANSCRIPT:

Brad (00:00):
Welcome to the B.rad podcast, where we explore ways to pursue peak performance with passion throughout life without taking ourselves too seriously. I’m Brad Kearns, New York Times bestselling author, former number three world ranked professional triathlete and Guinness World Record Masters athlete. I connect with experts in diet, fitness, and personal growth, and deliver short breather shows where you get simple actionable tips to improve your life right away. Let’s explore beyond the hype hacks, shortcuts, and science talk to laugh, have fun and appreciate the journey. It’s time to B.rad.

Brad (00:38):
Go out there and perhaps test your VO2 Max if you’re interested. But you can also do the casual version, which is.

Brad (00:46):
Let’s talk about VO2 Max . This laboratory performance test has been getting a ton of publicity recently as a fantastic marker for overall health and longevity status, and predicting your longevity with this performance test. In fact, even mainstream medical voices have stated that one’s VO2 Max value is a superior predictor of longevity than anything found in a blood test. So it’s really cool to see this performance test emerging as a critical area of mainstream medicine and health, but in some ways, uh, VO2 Max can be a little overrated. So I want to do this recording to discuss all aspects of what it is, what it means, how to train it, because you hear a lot about these so-called VO2 Max workouts that’ll help you boost your VO2 Max levels, and I wanna make sure you have a clear understanding.

Brad (01:47):
So, let’s start with, the emergence of the cardiovascular performance test called VO2 Max rising to prominence as a marker for overall fitness status and longevity. And this happened in recent years, but the VO2 Max test has for decades been a key performance metric for endurance athletes to predict competitive potential. What it is is measuring the maximum amount of oxygen you can consume per minute when you’re performing near maximum effort. And you do the performance test, either on a treadmill or a stationary bicycle in a laboratory where you’re hooked up to a gas mask, a gas exchange mask. So you’re breathing into the mask and the tubes are going into what’s called a metabolic cart, and it’s measuring your oxygen usage as the performance, as the test gets harder and harder. So, the treadmill speeds up and the incline gets higher.

Brad (02:51):
Or on the bicycle you are asked to produce an increasing number of watts increasing the stair, stepping the degree of difficulty, uh, every 30 seconds or so. Now the performance, the, the metric is expressed in a number, of milliliters per minute, per kilogram of body weight. So it’s a function of your body weight and the lower your body weight, the higher potential VO2 Max . That’s why you see the skinny runner or extreme endurance athlete like a cross country skier or a Tour de France cyclist having an extremely high VO2 Max level. That idea is interesting to file away in the back of your head as we talk through this because when they talk about VO2 Max being the end all, you realize that a lower body weight changes the equation and therefore does not place emphasis or importance on the amount of muscle mass you’re carrying.

Brad (03:53):
So, especially as we age with the preeminent longevity goal being to preserve muscle mass and muscle strength throughout life, that somewhat comes at a cost for our VO2 Max . So the VO2 Max is really measuring your capability as a pure endurance machine without regard to your strength, power or a muscle mass status. Okay? So most cardiologists, as well as respected sources like the Mayo Clinic, are now touting VO2 Max as superior to anything found in blood work, EKGs or other routine screenings. And also it’s found news flash revelation that those with a low VO2 Max , uh, are in terrible shape. And so it goes hand in hand that if you’re not good at processing oxygen and you can’t you can’t utilize a lot of oxygen to do an impressive work effort, uh, you’re gonna be in big trouble.

Brad (04:47):
So, um, once one gets fit and healthy and elevates VO2 Max out of dangerously low into good or very good range, that’s when I think, um, it ceases to have great importance on your overall longevity status. So what you wanna do is go from lousy VO2 Max to good, but then trying to make incremental improvements, going from good to great, or going from the 80th percentile to the 95th percentile necessarily comes at the cost of other fitness attributes such as strength, power, perhaps your ability to, uh, deadlift your body weight a number of times or whatever the performance metric that’s not related to maximum volume of oxygen consumption, but is itself extremely important. I’m gonna say that VO2 Max is no more valuable than tracking one’s mile time or one’s 400 meter time, or one’s favorite benchmarks in the gym.

Brad (05:46):
However, like many aspects of exercise science that’s been co-opted for mainstream fitness promotion,. VO2 Max is now drifting into the overrated category. So a takeaway low VO2 Max is a huge and terrible red flag of impending demise for those who are unfit. Improving it through cardiovascular exercise is an absolutely urgent objective to get out of the high risk status and into the healthy status. But overall, it’s less important than you might think. What’s found when you get into the good to, uh, great level of VO2 Max and predicting competitive potential amongst endurance athletes is when you see a competitive athlete, everyone, out there has a high, a very good VO2 Max , but their scores have minimal correlation to competitive performance. Exercise physiology research shows that VO2 Max is highly influenced by genetics, and also it is minimally trainable.

Brad (06:47):
So you get in shape, you get your VO2 Max up to a decent level, but then there are constraints that are largely genetic. And try as you might and train harder and harder and get fitter and fitter, you’re not going to raise your VO2 Max very much outside of those, uh, genetic constraints. Uh, in practical terms, what I’m talking about is if you watch the Olympic marathon on television from Paris and watch the first 50 people across the finish line, every single one of them, let’s say, has a VO2 Max in the superior category, like over 70 milliliters per minute per kilogram of body weight. But the distribution from first place to 50th place has no correlation to those VO2 Max value. So the person in 25th or 30th or 40th might have had a super awesome VO2 Max of the 83, while the winner might have had a 71, but all of them are in the superior category.

Brad (07:42):
So once you get VO2 Max up to a respectable or a good level, it ceases to be super important obsessing about those numbers. In fact, in elite running circles, a performance metric called running economy is considered a better predictor of competitive success than VO2 Max. Running economy measures how much oxygen you’re processing when you’re running at sub maximal levels for a long time, such as over the course of a marathon. So it’s your oxygen utilization at sub maximal levels. Even better way to predict an athlete’s competitive potential. This was a great quip from a live lecture that I saw from Dr. Glenn Gazer. He’s a leading exercise physiology scientist and one of the experts on exercise for fat reduction. He was giving a presentation years ago when we were young athletes. He went to listen to this guy and he said, here’s the best way to measure competitive potential.

Brad (08:41):
You go to a race, you stand at the finish line, and you see who crosses the finish line first. That person is expressing the highest potential at that time. So the reason I want to kind of, uh, tone down the obsession with raising one’s VO2 Max value, for forever and ever forever more is because the obsession with VO2 Max leads to this promotion of so-called VO2 Max workouts. So this is the recommended protocol to boost your VO2 Max . You see a lot of experts and influencers touting these scientifically validated workouts to boost VO2 Max , and one of the most favorite ones is called the four by four by four. So it’s four minutes of a maximum effort with a four minute rest period repeated four times. So four times four minutes hard with four minute recovery in between each of these efforts.

Brad (09:37):
And so for that four minutes, you’re really hitting it hard. You’re going as fast as you can for four minutes that you can sustain for four minutes, and the four minute recovery goes by quickly, and then you gotta slam another one. So I’m gonna call this an extremely strenuous workout that is very difficult to perform on a regular basis, especially if you don’t have a sufficient aerobic base. And as I’ve been talking about extensively with the promotion of our new book, Born to Walk, the aerobic base is the foundation for all manner of more complex and more strenuous fitness activity. So in order to boost your VO2 Max , besides short cutting to these four by four strenuous workouts, you have to put a lot of time in at a comfortable heart rate to build your aerobic system in order to absorb and benefit from a specific VO2 Max protocol workout.

Brad (10:34):
You can’t just jump into doing Four by Four by Fours off the street or off the couch and expect to thrive and improve. The workout is too strenuous to perform. That’s where the aerobic base comes in. So when you hear people saying that, oh, you really have to push yourself and get up into the high oxygen consumption levels in order to, uh, prompt an an increase in VO2 Max , it’s simply not true. So even the leisurely walk that you take with the dog around the block every evening is contributing to your cardiovascular fitness. It’s boosting your aerobic competency and thereby teeing you up for further potential improvements in VO2 Max values from workouts at all exercise intensity levels. Yes, indeed, the Four by Four will be giving you, giving you a nice fitness stimulation and a nice boost. Okay, so any form of aerobic exercise will help improve VO2 Max , especially a deficient VO2 Max .

Brad (11:33):
Now let’s talk some numbers in case you’re interested, uh, because you might’ve seen these written up in articles or in in research studies. What’s a good VO2 Max ? What’s great, what’s deficient and so forth? First when we look at these numbers, most of the research, uh, has been done, uh, with male subjects. And so these numbers are correlating directly to males and females tend to be 15 to 30% lower with their VO2 Max scores for many reasons. One of them being that they have relatively smaller heart and lungs, less muscle mass, more body fat and lower hemoglobin levels. So they have less oxygen carrying capacity potential when they have that lower hemoglobin and hemato just due to female physiology differing from male physiology and among other reasons, that’s why the men in the Olympics run faster than the women.

Brad (12:29):
Okay? So when we talk about VO2 Max values, the female can kind of adjust, uh, that 15 to 30% difference. And so a superior female is going to be at a VO2 Max of 65, while the male might be at 75, something like that. Now, here’s what is widely touted as they bare minimum passing grade for cardiovascular health and fitness per the Cleveland Clinic, a VO2 Max of 32 milliliters per minute per kilogram of body weight. So we’re gonna go down with the females take, you know, 20% off that, so six. So it’s like a, a female 28 and a male 32 would be bare minimum passing grade. Here’s the sad part, the averages today for males, the average population has a VO2 Max of 30 to 35 for males in 20 to 25 for females. So the average person is barely passing.

Brad (13:29):
That would suck if it were a high school campus or a college campus where you walk around and look at the thousands of students walking around the pass and the grassy quad, and they’re barely passing as an average student <laugh>. That just shows how unfit modern population is, um, because again, that means approximately half the people are below average and deficient, and in the high health risk category due to insufficient ability to,consume oxygen at high intensity, meaning they’re basically unfit. Now, when you get below 32 and down into the needs to improve category and we get down to a VO2 Max of 18, this is the bare minimum independent survival level. If you drop below a VO2 Max of 18, you are at imminent risk of demise. And this is basically what we see with patients in hospice where it’s very difficult for them to get outta bed and shuffle across the hall and use the bathroom on their own so that, uh, can be now measured in black and white terms where they just are so poor with oxygen consumption.

Brad (14:42):
They don’t have the muscle endurance, the muscle power to do anything of note on the fitness side. And that means that soon their organs or systems will fail and they will die for what we like to call natural causes. So survival level VO2, Max 18, bare minimum passing grade, uh, 32 for males, let’s say 26 for females. And now we get into the fitness population. And what are some VO2 Max scores that are good or excellent? Uh, anyone of any age that’s over 50 will be considered excellent. So, uh, someone with a VO2 Max of 50 plus, you’re basically talking about a young person who is quite fit and perhaps playing sports, going to the gym regularly, doing some cardiovascular endurance training, and in the peak form and peak years of their life. Someone, an older person such as myself as I’m, uh, just about to hit 60 right now.

Brad (15:41):
And as I reported earlier on my social media, I did a VO2 Max test a couple years ago. The first test I’d done in decades since way back when I was a professional triathlete, and we used to perform these tests and obsessed with the numbers and the measurements. My VO2 Max was still 53 at its best, it was 81, which was in the, uh, you know, elite category for, uh, elite endurance athletes. Uh, but over the years, as I reduced my endurance training to a more sensible level and emphasize explosive training, power training, sprinting, high jumping, I still have what would be considered an excellent VO2 Max , even for someone in the younger age groups. So that’s great, I’m glad to see that. But I place minimal importance on VO2 Max these days, and I’m more interested in my 400 meter time as my primary metric for measuring my overall fitness competency and longevity potential.

Brad (16:36):
And again, 400 meters being so short around a minute’s time that it’s not really tapping into that endurance component of VO2 Max where you have to do a lot of training to train your body to process a lot of oxygen, uh, at that near maximum intensity. Like for example, the Four by Four workout would represent if you’re looking at elite athletes in the endurance sports, such as swimmers, long distance tour de France cyclists, long distance runners, marathon runners, the elites are up over 70 milliliters per minute per kilogram of body weight. And, uh, when you’re getting up over 80, it’s the very cream of the crop, the top percentiles, even amongst the elite population. Some of the highest numbers ever recorded are over 90. There’s been a few genetic freaks out there, like the great middle distance runner from Morocco, Hicham El Guerrouj.

Brad (17:34):
It was reported to have a VO2 Max of 93, the highest of all time. There was a cross country skier from Norway, Bjorn Daily, who had a VO2 Max over 90. And recently the world champion Olympic champion triathlete, Christian Blumenfeld, was also reported to have a VO2 Max over 90. So when you’re looking at the elites, 70 plus is elite level, and 90 is the highest ever recorded, a little bit over 90. So, going into the decades VO2 Max is going to decline. Of course, you want to stave off that decline and have it be as gradual as possible. As I report from my VO2 Max test of, oh, it was 80.2, sorry, at age 21 it was 80.2. And so <laugh>, let’s see almost 40 years, 37 years later, it was 53. So that’s a pretty serious decline from 80 to 53.

Brad (18:28):
But I’m still looking good on that category because I have great dedication to fitness, right? If you’re in your thirties and you want to get into that 95th percentile for males it would be 60 and for females would be 46. In your forties the 95th percentile is 56 for males and 43 for females. In your fifties 95th percentile would be 51 for males, 36 for females. In your sixties, it would be 43 for males, 29 for females. And so, again, remember when I talked about bare minimum passing grade, when you get to your seventies, 95th percentile, 40 for males, 25 for females. So <laugh>, once you’re in your seventies, only 5% of the septigenarian population is above that bare minimum passing grade. So we definitely want to aspire to be in those top percentiles, especially as we age by preserving our commitment to fitness and doing some high intensity training, as well as the great foundation of aerobic exercise, moving more frequently throughout the day with walking as the centerpiece of that.

Brad (19:36):
So that is basically the recipe to age gracefully and eliminate this high risk of decline and demise that comes when you lose your fitness competency and just allow it to drift away as the decades go past and you see your VO2 Max dropping down below, maybe it was 50 when you were in your twenties or thirties, and we’re playing on the, uh, community soccer team and doing 10 Ks on the weekend. And then without intervention, it’s gonna to drift below that 32 bare minimum passing grade. And then as we get into, I mean, look, when we talk about the 95th percentile in the seventies being only a few people over bare minimum passing grade, we also remember that life expectancy in the United States these days, is I believe females are around 80 and males are around 77 something like that.

Brad (20:28):
So we’re not even expected to live beyond 80 anyway, which is so ridiculous because as I did a whole show on our genetic potential as humans, we should all, uh, aspire to sail to 100 simply by getting out of our own way and making good decisions to swim against the grain and against the cultural influence of consuming nutrient deficient junk food, processed food, and not being even bare minimum activity to preserve assemblance of health. So simply by taking charge of your own health striving to, for example, minimize your consumption of prescription drugs, which all have significant side effects that can compromise health making a basic commitment to fitness which is a blend of general low level everyday movement, uh, regular resistance exercise and occasional brief explosive all-out sprints, you should be able to sail to a hundred in most cases.

Brad (21:26):
And that’s what I think I wanna share as a goal for everyone. And it doesn’t seem to be that out of reach, especially with all the advancements in medical science and technology, where if you do have a problem, you run right off to our wonderful, highly advanced medical system, you get the care you need, and then you go back to your busy exciting life where you’re not engaging with the medical system week in and week out for every little thing. Instead, you’re attacking the cause, you’re setting the foundation, you’re getting good sleep, you have good stress management skills, good dietary and exercise habits. You’re listening to the B.rad Podcast on the regular and getting all these wonderful tips. So go out there and perhaps test your VO2 Max if you’re interested. But you can also do the casual version, which is, for example, to time yourself in the one mile run.

Brad (22:14):
There’s a fantastic research out of the Cooper Institute along with the University of Texas A and M Southwestern Medical School. And they tested 66,000 people, put ’em through the paces for a one mile run test. The subjects were around age 50, and it was discovered that one’s performance in the mile run, an all out performance test in the mile run is highly predictive of your potential to live to age 85 in good health. So someone with a fast mile time at age 50 had a vastly superior chance of saintly along to 85 successfully and feeling good than someone who had a medium or an insufficient inferior time at age 50. So you ready for the numbers? Okay, here we go. We’re gonna write ’em down. We’re gonna set that goal, especially if you’re around age 50, adjust accordingly if you’re 40 or 60, but males and females in the superior category at age 50, were males breaking eight minutes for the mile and females breaking nine minutes for the one mile run.

Brad (23:24):
Again, this is not your average pace when you’re going out for a jog, but this is an all out performance test with the researcher and the white lab code and the stopwatch saying, okay, give it all you got. We’re gonna test you and we’re gonna put you into the statistical database. This is super important, ready, set, go. And you give it your very best. And if you can bust an eight minute mile out, or a sub nine for a female, you’re in the superior category. On the other side of the coin, males unable to break 12 minutes for an all-out mile or females unable to break 13 minutes are in the high risk category for disease and demise in the coming decades. So you better go do something about it if you can’t so much as shuffle along at a respectable pace. And remember, the human gait pattern changes from walking from walking to jogging at around 14 minutes per mile.

Brad (24:19):
So in order to pass the test and get outta that needs to improve category. You’re gonna have to be able to actually jog for a whole mile rather than needing to walk in, be interspersed with jogging. That’s a simple way that’s very closely correlated to paying a hundred bucks and getting a performance test in a laboratory, although it is fun to go and do it and get that gas mask on, it’s highly claustrophobic because you’re going as hard as you can and you’re breathing through these tubes. But it’s kind of fun to see like, Hey, here’s what my body can do. Let me put up some numbers. Let me get my report, let me study it, and go and try to live a fitness lifestyle and try to improve it and measure it regularly over time. So VO2 Max important to get competent at, but don’t obsess about it too much, especially with the workouts. That can be very stressful if you don’t have that sensible aerobic base from walking a lot every day. Thank you for listening, watching, uh, send me some follow up questions if you want more information about this podcast@bradventures.com.

Brad (25:24):
Thank you so much for listening to the B.rad Podcast. We appreciate all feedback and suggestions. Email, podcast@bradventures.com and visit brad kearns.com to download five free eBooks and learn some great long cuts to a longer life. How to optimize testosterone naturally, become a dark chocolate connoisseur and transition to a barefoot and minimalist shoe lifestyle.