V02 Max Challenge

[frommi]

This popped up in my twitter stream today:

A simple way to estimate VO2max or cardiorespiratory fitness:
15.3 x max heart rate/resting heart rate
where max heart rate = 208 - (0.7 x age)

According to this my V02max is 51.5 at age 47. Is this number somehow related to what you guys are talking about?

[Scott 2]

It's attempting to estimate the same number. But I think the formula is too dependent on resting heart rate. I happen to run low - my current resting heart rate is in the low 40s. That gives a v02 max in the 60's, probably 20 points higher than where other estimates put me.

[C40]

I'll update with new times every now and then

I did another test and I'm feeling great about the improvement.

(I should probably use 6:35 as my baseline time because the gains over the rides before that were largely related to bike setup, position, and getting used to riding again)

In between 4/19 and the next test I did a phase of base endurance riding (for now, HR generally 135-150 the entire ride), with a lot of rides around 2 hours and a few 3 hours. So perhaps most of the gains are only from the increased aerobic power. I tracked my times during that phase up the same 10km climb (7 times in those 2 weeks) at really similar exertions my time reduced gradually from 48 minutes to 44 minutes.

Now I'm taking a week of easy riding and testing.. Then next I'll do a few weeks of a build phase where I start doing intervals at higher intensities (some tempo, some up near lactic threshhold. and a bit above)

[Scott 2]

@C40 - How long did you to take build into 2-3 hour rides? That looks like a ton of volume. The rapid improvements in performance show it is working.


I'm approaching 6 weeks since surgery. Recovery is better than I'd hoped. This morning's run was 55 minutes at 4.5 mph, heart rate at 128bpm. I'm trying to respect my aerobic threshold and avoid the temptation to push. I can feel the improvements workout to workout.

The Garmin watch is fantastic, with my data backing my perceived improvement. Even the wrist based heart rate monitor seems to work well. GPS pacing is so cool.

I'm still fighting a deep fatigue. I guess this pattern is typical following surgery. I can do whatever I want in a day, but I am limited to 2 or 3 total things. It is very annoying. Despite reduced activity, I'm barely weight stable on 2700 calories a day. So I think there's still rebuilding happening behind the scenes.


I got a close friend into the Concept 2 rower. He's just starting out, but I'm psyched to add the additional layer of social support.

[C40]

@C40 - How long did you to take build into 2-3 hour rides? That looks like a ton of volume. The rapid improvements in performance show it is working.

After about two weeks, I was doing the base rides of 2 hours, and after 2.5 or 3 weeks total, also including 3 hour rides. I thought it would take longer to work up to that because I was doing very little exercise of significant durations, for years. Mostly just really short duration calisthenic stuff.

[Slevin]

@7Wannabe5 looks like you deleted your post, but it looked like you were conflating individual risk with population risk (which you might have noticed), and trying to do math on that to look at effect on the individual. Unfortunately, you can’t really do that and end up with any sort of meaningful number.

[7Wannabe5]

Note: My previous post which I deleted was too pessimistic due to bad math. @Slevin: my quick and dirty math was bad for reasons other than those you noted, which are still relevant to my updated post in terms of "meaningfulness." I'm just trying to express the risk/gain in terms other than those in the chart which are kind of misleading, IMO. Obviously, MMV significantly.

The chart below indicates that it is of much greater utility to move from Poor shape to Good shape than from Good shape to Superior shape. Moving from Poor to Good could result in as much as an expected lifespan gain of 3 waking hours/day, whereas moving from Good to Superior will only result in expected lifespan gain of less than 30 waking minutes/day. IOW, if you have to exercise for an extra half-hour per day in order to move the needle from Good to Superior, you are at break-even in terms of overall utility, unless you enjoy the additional exercise as an activity for other reasons or derive other benefits at the margin.

[jacob]

@7wb5 - The way I read the table is to compare similar numbers for different age groups. E.g. an 18yo with a fair VO2max will physically feel similar to 40-49yo with a good VO2max or a 60-69you with excellent VO2max. This means that fair feels like being 25 years older relative to good or 45 years older relative to excellent. Of course, ultimately we all slow down all the way to zero. A bad VO2max is just [decades] ahead of the curve.

[theanimal]

The chart below indicates that it is of much greater utility to move from Poor shape to Good shape than from Good shape to Superior shape. Moving from Poor to Good could result in as much as an expected lifespan gain of 3 waking hours/day, whereas moving from Good to Superior will only result in expected lifespan gain of less than 30 waking minutes/day. IOW, if you have to exercise for an extra half-hour per day in order to move the needle from Good to Superior, you are at break-even in terms of overall utility, unless you enjoy the additional exercise as an activity for other reasons or derive other benefits at the margin.

I'd say that is true for length of life, but it does not accurately capture the effect that exercise has on quality of life. Someone who is in superior shape is at much lower risk of getting heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer's than someone who is in Good shape, or Poor shape. So in absolute terms, you may only be getting less than 30 waking minutes/day but you are much more likely to be getting a few more quality years where you can move and live independently, live like your own definition of normal whereas someone with lower fitness will likely see physical and cognitive decline far sooner.

[ducknald_don]

Someone who is in superior shape is at much lower risk of getting heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer's than someone who is in Good shape, or Poor shape.

But not much different from someone who is in excellent shape.

[theanimal]

Yes, that's true. On second read, my post does a pretty poor job of what I'm trying to get across. I'm more or less saying what @Jacob said for the opposite case. That the better VO2 max you have, the more you are able to perform like that of excellent or superior levels of someone decades younger than you. For example if you are 73 year old woman with a VO2 max of 35, you would still qualify as excellent shape for the 50-59 bracket and as good shape (or above average) for the 40-49 bracket. That's a massive difference in the things you are able to do physically. Here is a chart that further illustrates that with some example activities from "Outlive"

[jacob]

Here is a chart that further illustrates that with some example activities from "Outlive"

Ooh! I was looking for something like that to make the point that "what feels physically easy" determines not only the "options" one has (should we take the bus or walk? the stairs or wait for the elevator?) but also the effective "menu" that one prefers. Someone who can walk 3mph up a 10% without breaking a sweat is more likely to want to go hiking, play soccer with the grand kids, maintain a garden, or even do some Swedish Death Cleaning compared to someone who treats ditto as "strenuous exercise".

[Scott 2]

Outside of an amusing hobby, my main v02 max motivation is absorbing the bad times. With a big reserve between my exercise performance and my activities of daily living, misfortune causes much less disruption. The resilience makes life easier. It's a laziness play, looking at the long game.


I do think the 95%+ curve on the plot above carries an unstated assumption - One can spend their entire life in the top 5%. I'm not so sure that's true. Extreme performance carries other costs, that might not be sustainable.

IMO the point of diminishing returns might be below that line, maybe in the Excellent range from the chart higher up. With the Zone 2 strategy, it's really not very hard. Just a little time consuming.

[7Wannabe5]

It also makes zero-percent sense to me that humans with higher body weight get lower score for same activity with same heart-rate measurement on some of the tests? I mean, I grok that being overweight is a health risk in and of itself, but if you are carrying extra subcutaneous fat on your ass, it is actually more difficult to perform the activity at same pace, just like if skinny person was doing test while wearing a weight-loaded fanny pack, right?

Anyways, on this step test which does not require input of body weight, I got 41.1 = Excellent for woman of age 58. My result on just the resting pulse measure which frommi posted above was a couple points lower. I refuse to participate in any of the tests or fitness activities that favor humans with skinny shanks and very long, muscular chimpanzee like arms (as opposed to those of us with relatively short, chubby Troll/Kewpie doll-like arms.)

https://www.trainermetrics.com/fitness- ... step-test/

My mother who is a complete disaster by any conventional measure of fitness (very chubby and uses a lift chair and a walker (due to already had both hips replaced and now needs a knee) recently had professional heart tests done by a cardiologist and rated in top group for her age range (83) and high likelihood to make it to age 90. One of my partners is in conventional measure of fitness great shape for his age (68). He plays tennis, rows, skis, still has skater-boy muscles under somewhat wrinkly skin etc., but his very high blood pressure measurements put him at super high risk for cardiac event. Also, recent study out of Scandinavia indicated that women who are over 5'9" are 26% less likely to develop heart disease than women who are 5'3" and under, possibly due to some weird combination of exposure to human growth hormone and estrogen. IOW, there is a strict limit to agency in some of these matters.

ETA: Recent research supports my thinking. The body weight adjustment factor tends to cause the cardiovascular functioning of overweight individuals to be greatly underestimated with VO2max measures that include it. Study after study actually performed in a lab indicates that that it should be measured relative to lean body weight only. IOW, it is valid to include body weight when comparing two individuals who are both 90% muscle, but carry different absolute amounts of muscle, but it is not valid when comparing somebody with 10% body fat vs 40% body fat. Humans have actually been refused needed medical procedures on the basis of this highly prejudicial measurement. This is why it’s important to spend some time studying math vs exercising. Even highly intelligent medical doctors are known to be terrible at translating studies to reality.

[Scott 2]

The tests don't have much choice. Weight is part of the metric. VO2 max is measured in milliliters of oxygen consumed in a minute per kilogram of body weight (mL/kg/min).


Whether V02 Max is the best metric or just popular? I dunno. I certainly like it more than BMI.

At least there's a performance component. Training to improve it is likely to promote health.

I'd agree comparison between individuals carries some pitfalls. I don't take that too seriously. Will the person posting a 45 out perform someone posting a 40? I dunno. But a 50 vs a 25? I'd have confidence in that one.

[theanimal]

The official/standard VO2 max test is weight agnostic. You wear an oxygen mask on a bike or treadmill and go until you can't anymore. The test is what is the max volume of oxygen you can process with an increasing workload. What is measured is the exchange of gases between CO2 and O2 The more fit you are, the more oxygen you can process. Being overweight doesn't preclude one from getting a higher number than average, but it does make it much less likely, especially if the person isn't regularly training.

There is another measure called the Fick equation which is a formula composed of cardiac output and oxygen content and is tested. Nothing regarding weight. This measure is not used as much.

The following link has an overview of the measures described above. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/VO2_max

There are formulas like the metabolic equivalent (MET), which is what @scott2 is referring to above or others like @7w5 mentioned, but they are meant to be a rough estimate and are not the formula or measures used to calculate VO2 max.

[Scott 2]

@theanimal - it looks like you're making a distinction between absolute and relative v02 max. Interesting, I didn't know there were two measures. The wiki article even says the relative score does not scale linearly with body weight.


An MET is a little different. From what I'm reading, you have to divide relative v02 max by 3.5 to convert to METs:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metabol ... 2Fkg%2Fmin.

[jacob]

It also makes zero-percent sense to me that humans with higher body weight get lower score for same activity with same heart-rate measurement on some of the tests? I mean, I grok that being overweight is a health risk in and of itself, but if you are carrying extra subcutaneous fat on your ass, it is actually more difficult to perform the activity at same pace, just like if skinny person was doing test while wearing a weight-loaded fanny pack, right?

It makes a lot of sense from a performance perspective. Carrying extra "dead weight" detracts from performance. For example, when I put on a 30lbs backpack raising my "weight" from 180 to 210lbs, my walking speed for the same perceived effort goes from 6.3kph to 5.3kph, which is inversely proportional to the extra weight I'm hauling. Extra dead weight makes performance more difficult. Of course there are exceptions where weight doesn't matter [much] such as rowing, ... but very many performance activities do require moving the body around for speed and that's why the numbers scale by weight.

Your weight-free step test has your weight included in the exercise itself which is why you don't have to input it manually. Insofar you repeated the test with a a backpack weighing 10% of your bodyweight, you should see your number go down proportionally by ~10% as well.

[7Wannabe5]

Below are the articles I skimmed and their conclusions. The second one comparing female athletes vs non-athletes might be most revealing/interesting. It indicates that training definitely will definitely improve VO2 max, and female athletes carry ignificantly lower body fat percentage than non-athletic females, but the correlation between body fat and VO2 max within the groups is insignificant.

Basically, this means that aerobic conditioning is more accurately measured relative to lean muscle mass rather than total body weight. So, when you also throw decreased capacity with age into the picture, the VO2/kg measures (which are what is being compared in both the chart I posted above and the page theanimal copied from the book) offer the false impression that the cardio-vascular-muscular system of a skinny slow jogging guy in his 60s is as healthy as some chubby kid in his 20s. This is not true, because as the studies reveal, if the chubby kid had bariatric surgery, extreme liposuction, or simply went on a very low calorie diet and lost the excess weight in a short amount of time, without improving his fitness activities, his newly lean VO2/kg would be much better than those of the old skinny slow jogging guy. So, there's too much apples and oranges in the mix.

It makes a lot of sense from a performance perspective. Carrying extra "dead weight" detracts from performance.

Absolutely! For instance, I can't hike as fast as most of the grouchy old guys with whom I go hiking, because I am hauling along all my lower body pudge with my smaller lean mass, but I can hike longer than they can, and I will likely still be trudging along hauling my fat ass behind me after they are dead

Your weight-free step test has your weight included in the exercise itself which is why you don't have to input it manually.

Gotcha. Funny note would be that my subjective take on my current conditioning due to year of being too sick to exert myself would be fat and frail, but according to that test and resting pulse metric, I am still chubby and fit I highly doubt that I could jog 6 miles per hour(or maybe I just really don't want to, maybe I could make myself do it for big enough carrot, dunno) , but I can carry 75 lbs up the 4 flights of stairs to my tiny apartment, if arranged as 35 lbs in my backpack and 40 lbs in a box with handles.


https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10918530/

Conclusion: The major influence of body weight on VO2max is explained by FFM; FM does not have any effect on VO2max. Fatness and excess body weight do not necessarily imply a reduced ability to maximally consume oxygen, but excess fatness does have a detrimental effect on submaximal aerobic capacity. Thus, fatness and VO2max should be considered independent entities.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4316241/

The mean VO2max in female athletes was 39.62 ± 2.80 ml/kg/min and the mean VO2max in female non athletes was 23.54± 3.26 ml/kg/ min. The difference in VO2max of female athletes and non athletes was statistically highly significant

The mean body fat percentage in athletes was 24.11±1.83% and in non athletes was 29.31± 3.86%. The difference was statistically highly significant

We computed Pearson correlation test for assessing the relation between VO2max and body fat percentage. In both the groups; it showed negative correlation but it was not statistically significant

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/a ... 7621000019

Conclusion
Numerous studies further indicate that
O2max is ahead of traditional risk factors and has been described as prognostically more important than adiposity.177 The absolute
O2max reflects the individual's intrinsic aerobic exercise capacity and the relative
O2max reflects more the exercise capacity during weight-bearing exercise. The
O2max relative to fat-free mass, lean body mass or skeletal muscle mass is not influenced by adipose tissue, and the last two can be more useful to precisely distinguish between individuals differing in muscle adaptation versus maximum oxygen uptake. In obese individuals, the
O2max is low when related to actual BW, but usually normal when related to height or FFM. Surgical weight loss does not improve the absolute
O2max, but a general consensus exists on the positive effect on
O2max relative to body weight. Active muscle mass involved during exercise is highly associated with
O2max, therefore the
O2max relative to lean body mass or skeletal muscle mass may be a better indicator to reflect muscle endurance in obese individuals, combined with the first ventilatory threshold which is considered to be a body mass–independent parameter and reflects the daily activity level.

[Scott 2]

I agree with the distinction, but I'm not sure how it changes what one does? The 60 year old jogger can't turn back the clock by 40 years.

Maybe considering an absolute metric bolsters the argument against extreme calorie restriction? Or discourages pure endurance athletics for a health maximizer?

In my N of 1, there hasn't been much down side of adding 20+ points to my score. Maybe the time cost? I'm weaker in the weight room, but not to the point where it impacts quality of life.

I do think recovery from my recent surgery was far easier due to the higher v02 max. By the time I was back to 50% of pre-surgery capacity, activities of daily living were low effort.