Raising it

How do I increase VO2 max after 50?

By GyroscopeUpdated November 14, 20268 sources

The same way as at 30, starting gentler. Build up steady cardio first, then add one or two hard sessions a week. Five men retested at 50 got back the oxygen use they’d had at 20 after six months of training.

After 50, a lot of people assume the decline is fixed and training can only slow it. The number does fall faster with each decade. But in the one study that retested the same men 30 years apart, six months of training brought their oxygen use back to where it had been at 20.

We’d start or keep two hard sessions a week after 50, after a few weeks of steady work to build up to them. People in their 70s trained this way for five years without losing fitness.

The Dallas men

In 1966, five healthy 20-year-old men in Dallas took part in a bed rest and training study. Thirty years later, researchers brought them back at about 50, tested them, and put them through six months of endurance training.

Their oxygen use rose 14 percent, from 2.9 to 3.3 liters a minute, which was exactly where they’d been at 20. The researchers wrote that 100 percent of the decline over 30 years was reversed. Per kilogram they went from 31 to 36, since they were heavier than at 20. None of them reached the peak they’d hit after training at 20, so age did leave a mark.

The gain came from their muscles pulling more oxygen out of the blood, while the heart’s top output stayed about the same. Older muscles respond, like a garden left alone for years that comes back once someone tends it.

Generation 100

In Trondheim, Norway, 1,567 people aged 70 to 77 were assigned to two sessions a week of 4x4 intervals, two sessions a week of 50 minutes steady, or the national activity guidelines, for five years. They started at 28.6, far above the US middle for their age. The researchers expected a fall of at least 3.5 points over five years. None of the three groups lost fitness, and the interval group ended 0.7 points higher than the others.

What changes after 50

• The fall speeds up. In healthy adults followed for about eight years, VO2 max fell 3 to 6 percent a decade in the 20s and 30s and more than 20 percent a decade in the 70s, faster in men from the 40s on. Holding steady is a win, and it lifts your rank. A man at 30 sits at about the 74th percentile in his 60s and above the 90th in his 70s.
• Max heart rate formulas run low. The old 220 minus age underestimates max heart rate in older adults, so zones built on it are too easy. The tool below uses 208 - 0.7 x age.
• Intervals may help a bit more. In a review of 28 trials of adults up to 45, the edge intervals had over steady training was bigger in the older participants.

Before you start

US sports medicine screening looks at how active you are now, whether you have symptoms or known heart, metabolic or kidney disease, and how hard you plan to train. If exercise brings chest pain, fainting or unusual breathlessness, or you have one of those conditions, see a doctor before hard sessions. If you’ve been inactive, walk briskly for a few weeks first. On a beta blocker, train by effort instead of heart rate.

Canadian physiologist Roy Shephard wrote that regular aerobic exercise can push back the point where independence is at risk by 10 years or more. See is it too late after 60? and how do I do the Norwegian 4x4?