Raising it

Can walking raise your VO2 max?

By GyroscopeUpdated November 15, 20267 sources

Yes, if you’re starting from a low base. In a review of 24 trials, brisk walking raised VO2 max in people who hadn’t been active. Once a walk feels easy, take it uphill or add hard 4-minute climbs to keep it rising.

Walking gets dismissed as too gentle to count, because the VO2 max stories are about intervals and athletes gasping on treadmills. For someone who mostly sits, though, a brisk walk is real work for the heart, and the trials show it. The catch comes later, when the same walk stops being hard.

We’d start with 30-minute brisk walks five days a week, which is the 150 minutes the US guidelines ask for. When that feels easy, add hills, and then one session a week of four hard 4-minute climbs.

What the trials found

In 2007, researchers at the University of Ulster pooled 24 randomized trials of walking programs. In previously inactive adults, walking raised VO2 max and lowered weight, BMI, bodyfat percentage and the diastolic (bottom number) blood pressure. The CDC lists brisk walking as its example of moderate activity.

The review’s summary doesn’t give the size of the gain. Across 28 trials of steady and interval training, people who started less fit gained more, which favors anyone starting with walks.

Why it stops working

Your heart adapts to what you ask of it, the way a bag of groceries builds your arms until it starts feeling light. Once a walk is easy, it no longer pushes the heart near its top output. In the 2007 Norwegian 4x4 trial, already-fit men who trained steadily at 70 percent of their max heart rate didn’t improve significantly in eight weeks, while the group doing four hard 4-minute blocks gained 7.2 percent.

Walking can be hard, though. Pick a steep hill, or a treadmill on an incline, and walk up it fast enough that you’re breathing hard for 4 minutes, then stroll down or slow right down for 3. Do that four times. Stairs work the same way, and how to increase VO2 max naturally has the stair studies. In Generation 100, people aged 70 to 77 did 4x4 intervals at about 16 on the 6 to 20 effort scale twice a week for five years, and none of the groups lost fitness.

Why a small gain counts

In 33 studies of more than 100,000 people, every extra 1 MET of fitness (3.5 ml/kg/min, about 1 km/h faster running speed) went with 13 percent lower risk of death. The least fit had 1.40 times the risk of people with middling fitness, and 1.70 times the risk of the fittest, so most of the gap sits in that first step up, which is where walking helps.

Measure it with a walk

The 1-mile walk test, built on 343 adults aged 30 to 69, needs only a measured mile, a watch and your heart rate at the finish. A 50-year-old woman of 170 pounds who walks it in 15 minutes at 140 beats a minute comes out at 29.5. Walk it now, then again after 8 to 12 weeks of the plan above, using the calculator below.

Where does your number come from?

Apple Watch± 6.1Garmin± 5Fitbit± 8Oura or WHOOP± 812-minute run± 71.5-mile run± 71-mile walk± 4.4Beep test± 4.4Resting heart rate± 4.7Lab testmeasured

About you, and your test

Ageyrs

Sex

WomanMan

Units

USMetric

Your time (min:sec)minHeart rate at the finishbpmWeightlb

33to42ml/kg/min, likely range. Most likely 37.8.

38

10th22.125th28.250th35.375th43.090th50.8

LowLowBelow averageBelowAbove averageAboveHighHighTop 10%

You have the engine of a 39-year-old

37.8 is about the 59th percentile for men in their 40s. Group: above average

How far to trust it. Built on 343 adults aged 30 to 69. The band is its published error turned into your weight. Kline and others, 1987

When is a change real? Compare a source only with itself. A change smaller than about 2 to 4 points can be noise: a review of 14 studies put a meaningful change at 1.75 to 3.5 ml/kg/min.

Where you standRaise it with the 4x4Get your true VO2 max