VO2 max studies, tips and resources
Every tip and study on this site, each in one line you can pass on. Tap Copy and it goes in a message with its link.
Tips to pass on
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If you can, start with brisk walks most days and a few fast flights of stairs or a steep hill each week. That builds a bigger engine with no gym.
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Do cardio most days at a pace where you can still talk, and make one or two sessions a week hard.
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The Norwegian 4x4 is 4 minutes hard at 90 to 95 percent of your max heart rate, then 3 minutes easy, four times.
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Three 20-second stair climbs, three days a week, raised VO2 max 12 percent in six weeks in young women who didn't exercise.
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The US middle drops about 4 points a decade, so holding your VO2 max steady after 40 moves you up the ranks.
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People aged 70 to 77 who trained twice a week for five years lost no fitness.
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Apple Watch Series 10 came in 6.25 points low on average against a lab test. Compare your watch only with itself.
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Believe a change of more than 2 to 4 points, measured the same way 8 to 12 weeks apart.
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220 minus your age runs low after 30. 208 minus 0.7 x age fits better, and 1 in 3 people are still more than 11 beats off.
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Losing 10 percent of your weight raises your VO2 max about 11 percent with the same heart. Only training grows the engine.
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In 122,007 people tested at the Cleveland Clinic, below average fitness for their age went with the same extra risk of death as smoking.
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Beet juice and training masks didn't raise VO2 max in trials. The training did.
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Mostly sitting, or chest pain or a heart condition? Talk to your doctor before the hard minutes.
The studies
What sets your VO2 max
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2000. In healthy people the heart and blood set the ceiling, and training raises VO2 max mainly by raising how much blood the heart pumps.
Bassett and Howley, a review
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2001. Retested at 50, the men used only 11 percent less oxygen than at 20, but their number fell from 43 to 31 because their weight rose from 77 to 100 kg.
McGuire and others, the Dallas Bedrest and Training Study, 5 men
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2001. Six months of training at 50 brought their oxygen use back to what it was at 20.
McGuire and others, the same 5 men
Raising it
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2015. Steady endurance training raised VO2 max 4.9 points and interval training 5.5, against no exercise.
Milanović and others, 28 trials, 723 healthy adults
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2007. Four 4-minute efforts three times a week raised VO2 max 7.2 percent in eight weeks, and the same work at a steady pace didn't raise it significantly.
Helgerud and others, 40 moderately trained men
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2013. Interval training for 6 to 13 weeks raised VO2 max about half a liter a minute in sedentary or lightly active adults.
Bacon and others, 37 studies, 334 adults under 45
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2017. Everyone who hadn't improved after six weeks did once they added two more hours of training a week.
Montero and Lundby, 78 adults
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1999. The same 20-week program raised VO2 max about 400 ml a minute on average, from almost nothing in some people to more than a liter in others.
Bouchard and others, the HERITAGE Family Study, 481 adults
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1984. After stopping completely, they lost 7 percent of their VO2 max in three weeks and 16 percent by eight.
Coyle and others, 7 endurance-trained people
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2020. Training twice a week for five years, none of the groups lost fitness, against an expected drop of 3.5 points.
Stensvold and others, Generation 100, 1,567 people aged 70 to 77
Walks, stairs and bikes
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2007. Walking programs raised VO2 max in adults who hadn't been active.
Murphy and others, 24 trials
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2019. About 100 steps a minute was moderate effort and about 130 was vigorous.
Tudor-Locke and others, 76 adults aged 21 to 40
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2017. Three 20-second stair climbs, three days a week, raised VO2 max 12 percent in six weeks.
Allison and others, 12 young women who didn't exercise
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2019. Climbing three flights fast three times a day, three days a week for six weeks, raised VO2 max a little against people who didn't climb.
Jenkins and others, 24 inactive young adults
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2019. Six months of cycling to work raised fitness against people who carried on as before.
Blond and others, 130 inactive adults with overweight
Age, and how long you live
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2005. VO2 max fell 3 to 6 percent a decade in the 20s and 30s and more than 20 percent a decade in the 70s.
Fleg and others, 810 healthy adults retested over about 8 years
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2018. Below average fitness for age and sex, against above average, went with 1.41 times the risk of death, the same as smoking.
Mandsager and others, 122,007 people at the Cleveland Clinic
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2009. Each extra MET of fitness (3.5 points) went with 13 percent lower risk of death.
Kodama and others, 33 studies, more than 100,000 people
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2009. Below about 18 for men and 15 for women, living on your own gets hard.
Shephard, a review
What's normal, and how to measure it
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2022. The US chart of lab-measured VO2 max by decade and sex, from 20 to 89, on a treadmill and on a bike.
Kaminsky and others, the FRIEND registry, 34 US labs
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2026. The watch came in 6.25 points low on average against a lab mask test, and put only 5 of 35 people in their right fitness band.
Lambe and others, Apple Watch Series 10, 35 people
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2022. Watches that estimate from your runs were right on average, give or take about 5, and a real change is 1.75 to 3.5 points.
Molina-Garcia and others, the INTERLIVE network, 14 studies
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1987. A timed 1-mile walk and your heart rate at the finish give a VO2 max estimate with no running.
Kline and others, 343 adults aged 30 to 69
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2017. A new treadmill equation missed measured VO2 max by 5.1 percent on average, against 21.4 for the older ACSM equations.
Kokkinos and others, the FRIEND registry, 7,983 adults
Max heart rate
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2001. 208 minus 0.7 x age fit max heart rate better than 220 minus age, which runs low in older adults.
Tanaka and others, 351 studies, 18,712 people
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2013. 211 minus 0.64 x age fit best, and about 1 in 3 people sat more than 11 beats from it.
Nes and others, the HUNT fitness study, 3,320 adults
Shortcuts
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2021. Nitrate, as in beet juice, improved power and time to exhaustion but had no significant effect on VO2 max.
Gao and others, 73 studies, 1,061 people
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2016. Six weeks of hard cycling raised VO2 max about as much with an Elevation Training Mask as without it.
Porcari and others, 24 moderately trained adults
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2014. Daily iron raised VO2 max by about 2.35 points, in a group where low iron is common.
Pasricha and others, 18 trials in women of reproductive age
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2025. About 25 to 40 percent of the weight lost on these drugs is lean mass, and studies hadn't shown a gain in fitness.
Liu, Weeldreyer and Angadi, a review of GLP-1 drugs
Resources
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Adult Activity: An Overview 150 minutes of moderate activity a week, or 75 vigorous, plus 2 days of strength work. Page dated December 20, 2023.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
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Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, Second Edition The full US guideline behind those numbers. Page updated November 19, 2025.
US Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion
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Track your cardio fitness levels How Apple Watch estimates your VO2 max, and how to update your data. Published September 14, 2026.
Apple Support
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Using Apple Watch to estimate cardio fitness with VO2 max Apple's own paper on how the estimate was built and checked, May 2021.
Apple
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Getting your VO2 max estimate for running What a Garmin needs to give you a number: outdoor runs of 10 minutes or more, with your max heart rate set.
Garmin, Forerunner 245 owner's manual
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50 years of the Cooper 12-minute run Where the 12-minute run and the 1.5-mile run came from.
The Cooper Institute
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2024 Adult Compendium of Physical Activities The measured oxygen cost of more than a thousand everyday activities.
Herrmann and others
