Member-only story
A Summarized Guide to ‘VO2 Max Essentials’: Why It Matters for Athletes and Everyone Else
A very short book (think of it as a very long blog post instead of a book). Which is kinda cool as most books are unnecessarily too long. In this case I’d like it to be longer and to include more detail.
VO2 Max, often used as the “gold standard” for assessing endurance performance potential, is also a good predictor of how long you’ll live, recent research showed. And this is new for me. Brady Holmer insights really make you think differently about athletic performance and longevity. I often associated a short long span to elite athletes, as their bodies are punished by constant and hard exercise. Maybe this is the case, but this book shows that improving VO2 Max would not only positively affect my cycling performance but my longevity. And being 48, longevity is starting to get prime display time in my daily thoughts.
So let’s start by the beginning. What is exactly VO2 Max?
It’s your maximal aerobic capacity and measures your cardiovascular fitness. In other words “is the highest rate at which your body can turn oxygen into energy”
You can think of VO2 Max as the ceiling of aerobic performance. However, most endurance events occur at an intensity well below VO2 Max. While having a high ceiling is a prerequisite for…
