Age, health and weight

Does VO2 max decrease with age?

By GyroscopeUpdated November 14, 20265 sources

Yes, and faster each decade. It falls 3 to 6 percent a decade in your 20s and 30s and more than 20 percent a decade in your 70s, at every activity level. People in their 70s who kept training held it flat for five years.

Most people picture aging as a gentle, even slope, a little lost every year. Older studies drew it that way, because they compared different people of different ages at one moment. When researchers followed the same people for years, the slope turned out to steepen with every decade.

We’d count holding your number steady as a win at any age past 30. It’s like walking up a down escalator that speeds up every ten years. Standing still means sliding down, and holding your spot takes steady steps.

Following the same people

In the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging, researchers tested 810 healthy adults aged 21 to 87 (435 men and 375 women), then tested them again over a median of 7.9 years.

• VO2 max fell 3 to 6 percent a decade in the 20s and 30s.
• By the 70s and beyond, it fell more than 20 percent a decade.
• From the 40s on, men lost it faster than women.
• The pattern held at every level of leisure activity, from the least active quarter to the most.

Max heart rate fell only 4 to 6 percent a decade. Most of the loss came from the oxygen the body used with each heartbeat.

The US chart

FRIEND 2022, from 16,278 lab treadmill tests, shows the middle value falling about 13.5 percent, or 4 points, a decade. Men go from 46.5 in their 20s to 17.6 in their 80s, and women from 36.6 to 15.4.

Canadian physiologist Roy Shephard put the point where losing your independence becomes likely at about 18 for men and 15 for women, usually reached at 80 to 85. The US middle for people in their 80s sits right there.

Holding still climbs the chart

Because everyone’s number falls, a number that stays put rises through the ranks. A man at 42 is at about the 73rd percentile in his 40s, the 87th in his 50s and above the 90th from 60. Drag the age in the chart below to see it.

It can be held

In Trondheim, Norway, 1,567 people aged 70 to 77 trained twice a week for five years, with intervals, steady sessions or the national activity guidelines. They started at 28.6, far above the US middle for their age. The researchers expected a fall of at least 3.5 points. None of the groups lost fitness, and the interval group ended 0.7 points higher than the others.

Weight hides some of the change. Five Dallas men retested at 50 had lost only 11 percent of their oxygen use in liters a minute over 30 years, but 28 percent per kilogram, because they’d gained 23 kg (50 lb). Shephard wrote that regular aerobic exercise can take 10 or more years off your biological age.

For what to do about it, see how do I increase VO2 max after 50? and is it too late after 60?