599: Expert insights on improving VO2 max for longevity
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Welcome to the MindBodyGreen podcast. I'm Jason Wachub, founder and co-CEO of MindBodyGreen, and your host. This podcast was made in partnership with Solarae SharpMind Memory. When you're busy, do you feel like you're not always as sharp as you could be? Well, research shows that even occasional stress can impact your working memory. That's where science-backed nootropics come in, like Solarae SharpMind Memory.

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That's Solaray.com, S-O-L-A-R-A-Y.com. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. This podcast was made in partnership with Solaray Sharp Mind Memory. When you're busy, do you feel like you're not always as sharp as you could be? Well, research shows that even occasional stress can impact your working memory.

That's where science-backed nootropics come in, like Solarae Sharp Mind Memory. Using premium botanical ingredients, Solarae Sharp Mind Memory helps improve working memory and cognition. It's made with a smart blend of clinically-backed ingredients like Cognivia, which is a unique sage extract shown to support memory function. MindBodyGreen listeners can visit Solarae.com and use code MINDBODYGREEN for 30% off.

That's solaray.com, S-O-L-A-R-A-Y.com. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

Welcome to our fifth episode of the MBG Compilation Podcast Series. Throughout the month of May, we've been testing this new format, bringing you a special compilation episode focused on some of our most popular topics like brain health, strength training, menopause, and more. In these episodes, we share expert insights pulled together from some of our listeners' favorite conversations, giving you a quick, powerful look into the topics that matter most for your health and longevity. We'd love to hear if you'd like to see more of these in the future, so let us know.

Let's talk about a number that could literally predict how long you'll live, your VO2 max. It might sound like a term reserved for elite athletes, but VO2 max is one of the most important health metrics for everyone. It measures how efficiently your body uses oxygen during exercise, and more and more research shows it's a powerful indicator of longevity and overall health.

In today's show, we're bringing you a highlight reel of expert insights from past conversations with leading voices in exercise science and performance. Think of it as your go-to guide to understanding and improving VO2max. You'll hear from Dr. Andy Galpin on what VO2max actually tells us about our bodies and how to test and improve it without a lab.

Dr. Martin Gabala will explain how just one minute of effort can move the needle. And Dr. Abby Smith-Ryan dives into how women can adapt training and nutrition to boost endurance and energy, while Dr. Vanda Rai connects the dots between VO2 max, strength, and aging well. This is one I've personally been working on, and if your goal like mine is to feel strong, live long, and train smart, you're in the right place.

We're starting with Dr. Andy Galpin, an expert who brings both deep scientific knowledge and real-world performance experience to the table. Andy is the executive director of the Human Performance Center at Parker University and has spent over 15 years coaching elite athletes. Andy explains why VO2 max might just be the single most important number in your health profile and why improving it might be easier and faster than you think.

VO2 Max, what is it and why should I care? You should care because one could argue pretty strongly from the scientific literature that it is the single largest predictor of how long and how well you're going to live. None of those clinical risk factors, your blood pressure, your body composition, your BMI, things like that. They're all good, super important, but none of them will come even remotely close to predicting who's going to live more than VO2 Max will.

VO2max would outpredict anything else you could possibly measure. Nothing will tell you more about your lifespan than VO2max. VO2max, it is highly plastic. You will find plenty of people who will get that much success over the course of one to two years of training. Right now, obviously, the more trained you are,

to slow your progression of increase. That's pretty standard. But yeah, you can absolutely see large increases in eight to 10 weeks. So if you want to expand that and really think about Biotomax over the course of a year or two. Now, if you were at 35, would you double the 70? No, probably not. But if you were at 20, could you double the 40? Definitely. 100%. That can happen. We've seen things like that. Probably fairly realistic though. If you're 25 and you can get to 35 in a year, that's good. I'll tell you though, personally, you can definitely get to 35

way faster than a year, right? So I'm being a little bit conservative there, but you can see really big changes really quickly.

Now that we know VO2max is incredibly important and highly adaptable, you might be wondering how to actually improve it. The good news, there's no one-size-fits-all workout, and you don't need to be a marathon runner or gym rat to see progress. Andy explains why the type of exercise matters far less than the effort, and how often you really need to push yourself to make meaningful gains, and most importantly, how to do so without getting injured. Let's listen in.

So I will again give examples, but they need to be thought of as examples, not direct specifications and certainly not saying nothing else outside of this works. So the exercise mode is pretty, I don't want to say irrelevant, but it's unlimited. You mentioned rucking. Great. Swimming. Sure. Walking. Great. Sprinting. Pushing a sled. Crossfit. Great. Kettlebells. Spin class.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Scientific evidence on all of it. It's because that's not the thing that matters. If we're trying to improve your ability to bring in and utilize oxygen, all we have to do is follow one physiological principle called the SED principle, Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demand. You impose a demand...

and you get an adaptation that is specific to that demand. It is the example of if I asked a really simple question and I said, all right, Jay, like you want to get better at shooting free throws, you wouldn't be like, okay, like what zone should I be in? Should I have my left foot? You would shoot a free throw. Nothing is better at improving VO2max than challenging VO2max. It does not matter how you do it, right? Do something that puts you at or close to your VO2max. And there you go. Specificity tells us

That's the most direct route to improving VO2max. What's the protocol? Doesn't matter. 30 on, 30 off, two minutes on, six minutes on. That doesn't matter at all, as long as you challenge VO2max. That's specificity. You pick your exercise method, you pick the protocol, the interval, whatever you want to do, and we've at least...

package specificity. So it's not realistic to be like, oh, okay, I want to improve my VO2 max, I will do a heart rate max workout every day. And it's not even advisable. It's not even the best way. So there's realistic and there's also, all right, great. But on the surface, if once a week you can do something that gets you at or close to that maximum heart rate, you've checked off that box. Now we have to talk about the rest of your training because I will not advocate, again, I said specificity was the best way.

But you can't do it every single day. You can't do it physiologically. If we do something that is going to get us there once a week, depending on some cases, I might advocate for once every other week, which is two times a month. Can you give me two times a month where we're going to go after it, right? The biggest mistake you can make in your fitness, VO2 max or otherwise, is

is getting hurt. Literally, if you actually look at one of the biggest predictors of you to max over time is people who had the least amount of disturbances in training. Don't get big injuries. Okay. So what I'm saying, this is to say, progress slowly, like way slower than you think. Do not do the, I did a mile this week. I'll do two miles next week.

going good, I feel fine. Let's go three miles this week. You're doubling your volume or going to 50% increase every single week. That's only going to last four or five weeks. And it will be week six when you get hurt because you won't feel it week one or two or three, right? But you're laying the foundation of going, hey, we're not used to this thing. So progress way slower. Do not get hurt. Think about this on a 40 to 50 year timescale, right? If you're 40 years old, you've got another 60 to 80 years of exercise.

Most likely, right? By the time you get to be 160 years from now, life expectancy will probably be 120, not 100, right? With technology. So you're a third of the way there. If you're breaking down physically constantly already, you're not doing your 95-year-old self a very good service. You're definitely not even doing your 65-year-old self a good service. So think about this long-term. So what I want people to think about is like, you want to improve this VO2max, but you got 10 years to do it.

So year one is all walking. I'm being extreme, but you get the point. You don't even go past walking for a year. Screw all the heart rate max. We're going to walk. Okay, great. Now our ankles, our hips, our knees, our backs have gotten used to what we call tissue tolerance. It's gotten used to the pounding because it hasn't had that in 35 years. Okay, great.

Now year two, I will incorporate one day a week of light jogging for a mile. Again, I'm being like overly dramatic here, but you get the point. And if you do that, I promise you by the time you get to year five, you could do as much hard sprinting as you want and you will never get hurt. But if you do that whole compressed five-year cycle into five days, what do you think is going to happen here? So really think about this big picture here.

And don't dose like, okay, week one, I'll do this. Week two, I'll do this. Like, no, no, no. Think about this on the many, many months. Quarter one of this year, and then quarter two, I'll add something else. Quarter three. Think about that. And that's super conservative. I realize that. But you're blowing Achilles. You're going to miss a year of training.

Up next, we've got Dr. Martin Gabala, a professor at McMaster University and a pioneer in the science of high-intensity interval training, or HIT. He spent decades studying how short bursts of exercise can deliver big benefits, especially for people short on time, like all of us. He tackles a key question, how hard do you actually need to go during HIT? He dives into whether heart rate zones or perceived exertion matters more. Let's hear what he has to say.

So how do you define high-intensity interval training? Repeated bouts of hard work interspersed with recovery periods.

Now, the key question is probably how do we define hard? You know, I think people get this notion that, okay, the exercise is intermittent. I do something, I take a bit of a break, I go hard again. How we define hard is it depends on the context. And so hopefully that's a freeing message for a lot of people that you don't need to magically meet this single percentage of

your maximum heart rate, however you would measure that. So let me break that down. In a health or an exercise prescription context, hard means vigorous. And vigorous is well-defined in public health guidelines, in guidelines from various agencies. And so it's around 77%.

of your maximum heart rate. It's about a seven or eight on a 10 point scale. So if 10 is sprint from danger pace, save your child from an oncoming car. One is laying in bed. You know, moderate exercise is a five or a six. Vigorous is a seven or eight on that scale. You couldn't have a conversation with your workout partner, but you could spit out a couple of words and phrases.

So now that we've got the big picture from Dr. Gabal on how to think about intensity, let's get into the details with Dr. Abby Smith-Ryan. Oikos presents 15 Seconds of Strength. Here we go. Steve's got a trunk full of groceries and no one to help him. Oh, that's tough, Jim. Looks like a five trip load at least. He grabs the first bag, the second. Bob, it looks like he's trying to do it all one trip. He shimmies the door open, steps over the door. Go!

And he stumbles. Oh, right into the kitchen without missing a beat. Jim, now that's a man who eats his protein-packed Oikos. With 15 grams of complete protein in each cup, Oikos Triple Zero can help build strength for every day. Oikos, stronger makes everything better.

She's a physiologist and exercise scientist who dives into the specifics of how to structure your workouts for maximum VO2 max gains. She breaks down one of the most effective and surprisingly doable protocols for boosting cardiovascular fitness.

My recommendation is very leveraged in the science of a protocol that seems to be most effective for these VO2 max changes, cardiovascular changes, metabolic changes, is 10 sets of one minute on, one minute off. And cumulatively then, so then really you're only training for 10 minutes, but it's 20 with the rest period. And we've seen changes in three sessions. Wow. How hard are you going in that one minute? So that one minute is like,

Something that you could not do for a minute and 20. So you're going pretty hard. You're going like zone four or zone five, so to speak, anywhere from 70 to 100% heart rate. Yeah. And I mean, I've even seen a little bit less and I'm,

That's okay. That just might mean it might take maybe one extra session to see some of those benefits. And so it's a very manageable, effective approach where you don't really have to worry about time and zone. It's can you fit that in a couple times a week? And we've shown like the twice a week and not just us. I also know that you...

interacted with Dr. Kabbalah. A lot of his work focuses on that. And anyone can do anything for a minute. It's the feasibility component and the consistency, something that you can do again and again, and it can meet you where you're at. Depending on your fitness level, that might change.

Now let's hear from Dr. Gabala again as he explains how, when it comes to high-intensity interval training, sometimes less is really more. He highlights how you can still reap impressive health benefits from just a small dose of intense exercise and how the time commitment is surprisingly minimal. Let's dive in.

If you're willing and able to sprint or work very, very hard, you can get away with a surprisingly small dose of exercise and it can still be beneficial. Now, if you're the other end of that scale, you know, you're just getting into the hit range, 77% or so. We're not going to suggest that you could do three 20 second efforts like that and

and it's going to provide you with robust health benefits. Of course, anything is better than nothing, but think of it as that intensity duration trade-off. The classic studies that we did were three 20-second bursts within a total time commitment of 10 minutes.

So you can imagine you warm up for two or three minutes, you do a 20 second sprint, rest or recover for two minutes, do a second sprint, another two minutes of recovery, do a third sprint and a short cool down. So start to finish 10 minutes, but within that 10 minutes, you've only done one minute

of very hard work, these three 20-second sprints. And what we've seen is the improvements that you can see over several months, the improvements in your VO2 max, the improvements in other health-related markers is very similar to what we associate with a much larger dose of the more traditional moderate intensity continuous training. So we're not saying that HIIT is the only way or it's the best

but it's an option for a lot of people and especially those who cite time as a major barrier.

Next up, we have Dr. Vonda Wright, renowned double board certified orthopedic surgeon who's a member of our scientific advisory board. And she's going to discuss the key differences between sprint interval training and VO2 max training. She'll also introduce us to the concept of the fragility line, something that becomes more crucial as we age. Let's hear from Dr. Wright about how keeping your VO2 max in check is vital for maintaining independence and overall quality of life.

What I'm asking people do in sprint intervals is after you're completely warmed up, please do not try this. Rinse off your desk. Do your zone two. Walk for a while. Listen to a podcast. Turn off the distraction. And for 30 seconds, I ask people to do 30. You could do 10. 30 seconds. You are moving so fast and so hard that your heart rate goes up.

But you only have to stay there 30 seconds and then you completely recover. So when I do this on a treadmill, you could do it on any apparatus, I'm going along in my zone two. I turn off the podcast because I don't want to fly off the back and I punch 11. I'm not very tall. 11 is as fast as I can go on a treadmill. And I sprint my guts out for 30 seconds. We can all do this for 30 seconds.

And then I punch it back down to a walking pace and I completely recover. And it takes me two minutes, sometimes three, to bring my heart rate back down to about 130.

We do that four times. That's what I mean by sprint interval. Now let's talk about VO2 max. VO2 max is the maximum, is the true gold standard of fitness. It measures the oxygen diffusion from your lungs into your blood. The fitter you are, the higher your VO2 max. And I want to remind me, I want to talk about the fragility line as it relates to VO2 max. VO2 max training is what you're talking about, the Norwegian protocol.

Four minutes, as fast as you can go, and then only four minutes rest. So it's a little lower because you got to go four minutes. What we know is that about every decade that we age, we can lose about 10% of our VO2 max. And why does that matter? Well, here's why it matters, other than all the healthy reasons.

is that there is a VO2 max level, 18 for men, 16 for women, called the fragility line. Below that VO2 max or that fitness level, it's hard for you to get up from a chair by yourself. You may be able to walk across a room, but you literally...

can no longer do your activities of daily living. And you know what happens when you cross the fragility line? One in three people in the United States enters a nursing home. They can no longer live independently. So what do we do about it? Well, number one, I think it's important to torture yourself a little bit in midlife and go get your VO2 max tested. And you can do submaximal testing. You don't have to do the full Monty where you're puking on the treadmill.

But I think it's important to know because then we'll know if I do nothing, I'm expected to lose 10% every decade.

Martin Kavala brings it all together with a powerful closing message on why VO2 max is such a key factor for longevity. Whether you're just starting out with fitness or you're a seasoned athlete, maintaining a high VO2 max is one of the best ways to set yourself up for a long, healthy life. Let's hear Martin's final thoughts on this crucial marker of health and longevity.

Doing more HIIT would provide more bang for your buck. And you know, when you come back to that idea, your goal is longevity and general health. Probably the single best predictor is your cardiorespiratory fitness, which you measure objectively as VO2 max. And so getting your VO2 max and maintaining it as high as you can over the course of your life is probably the best insurance that you have. There's no guarantees, right?

but it's probably one of the best insurance markers that you're going to live, have a high likelihood of living long and living healthy. Thanks for tuning into today's show. Whether it was sprint intervals with Dr. Vonda Wright, practical protocols from Abby Smith-Ryan, or the science-backed wisdom of Martin Kabbalah, we hope you're walking away with a new appreciation for VO2max and how a few minutes of smart, intense movement can help you not just live longer, but live better.