Raising it

How do I increase my VO2 max?

By GyroscopeUpdated November 14, 20268 sources

Do cardio most days and make one or two sessions a week hard, like four 4-minute efforts with 3 easy minutes between. Steady training alone adds about 5 points, and intervals add about 1 more.

Online advice on raising VO2 max tends to split two ways. Some says hours of easy zone 2 is all you need, and some says only hard intervals move it. In the trials both kinds of training work, and the best plan uses both.

We’d build the week on steady cardio, at least the 150 minutes the US guidelines ask for, and make one or two of those sessions hard. Steady work builds most of the gain, and the hard minutes add the rest.

What the trials found

Across 28 controlled trials of 723 adults aged 18 to 45, who started at 40.8 on average, steady endurance training raised VO2 max by 4.9 points against no exercise. Interval training raised it by 5.5. Head to head, intervals came out ahead by 1.2 points, with bigger edges for longer intervals and longer programs.

The hard minutes count for more as you get fitter. In a 2007 Norwegian trial, 40 moderately trained men (already at 55 to 60, fit by any standard) did the same total work four ways for eight weeks. The group doing four 4-minute efforts at 90 to 95 percent of max heart rate gained 7.2 percent. The two steady groups didn’t improve significantly.

Why the hard minutes work

In healthy people, VO2 max is set mostly by how much blood your heart can pump in a minute, and training raises it by raising that. In the Norwegian trial, the heart’s output per beat rose about 10 percent after the intervals. Hard minutes work like a gym for the heart. They ask it to pump near its top output for minutes at a time, and it grows to meet the demand.

A week that does both

Walk, run, cycle, row or swim. The tool below turns your age into beats a minute for both kinds of session. These are typical ranges, and the Gyroscope app personalizes yours.

If you’re mostly sitting now, spend the first four weeks building up to 150 minutes of brisk walking before adding hard sessions. If exercise brings chest pain, fainting or unusual breathlessness, or you have heart, metabolic or kidney disease, see a doctor before going hard.

Everyone responds differently

In the HERITAGE study, 481 inactive adults did the same 20-week plan. The average gain was about 0.4 liters of oxygen a minute, but some people gained almost nothing and others more than 1 liter. Families clustered, and up to 47 percent of the difference was inherited. But a review of 37 interval studies found that in the 9 using longer intervals, every person showed a marked gain.

If your number hasn’t moved after 8 to 12 weeks, make the hard sessions longer or more frequent before deciding you’re a non-responder.

Full session details are in how do I do the Norwegian 4x4?, with the 4x4 timer to run it. The zone 2 argument gets its own page in is zone 2 the best way?, and recovery between hard days is covered on hrv.guide. For a 12-week plan built on your answers, take the quiz.