The Realistic VO2 Max Routine (3 Hours Per Week)

Olympic triathlon champion Christian Blumenfeldt has recorded a VO2max of 101, which is the highest value ever recorded. But this took elite genetics, decades of training, and up to 30 hours of exercise every week. And even that is nothing compared to an Alaskan sled dog who reaches a VO2max above 200 by pulling a sled for hours every day. You don't need to train like Blumenfeldt or an Alaskan sled dog. For longevity and reduced risk of heart disease the research suggests that a VO2max of 50 is already good enough. I increased my VO2max from 53 to 66 in just a few months without overtraining. In this video I'm going to share with you how I did it and how you can also increase your VO2max realistically, without killing yourself by dragging a sled for 6 hours a day or running 5 hours a day. I increased my VO2max from 53 to 66, which is approximately 25% improvement, within a few months of consistent training, both from a VO2max lab test, not a smartwatch estimate. This wasn't me doing cardio at all costs and neglecting everything else. I was still doing resistance training at the same time. There's no universal perfect score because VO2max depends heavily on age and sex, but as a simplified reference for younger and middle-aged men, above 60 is generally considered elite, around 50 is excellent, around 40 can be good depending on your age, but below 30 is generally poor for a younger adult, and approximately 50-20 approaches the minimum aerobic capacity needed for independent living, particularly as you get older. Women generally have lower population reference values, about 10-15% lower VO2max, and VO2max generally declines with age. And if you want to know how good your VO2max actually is for your age, then I built a 3-minute health assessment inside my top 1% health community. You can enter your VO2max, and it'll put into perspective for your age how good it is, and show you your health percentile, alongside your other biomarkers and fitness metrics, linked down below. I'm going to give you the exact protocol for increasing VO2max shortly, but first we need to address why some people believe that VO2max is mostly genetic. VO2max depends on three main systems, your heart's ability to pump blood, your blood's ability to transport oxygen, and your muscles' ability to extract and use that oxygen. If you're currently unfit, then doing anything can improve your VO2max, if you repeatedly increase your heart rate and improve these systems. Research has found that resistance training can produce modest improvements in VO2max, particularly in older or previously untrained people. For older people, it's going to work if your VO2max is below 25, and for younger people, below 40. But as you get fitter as your VO2max improves, you need to be doing some form of cardiovascular exercise, because the resistance training is not going to be enough. Research shows that both low-intensity cardio and high-intensity interval training increases VO2max. However, in the short term, high-intensity interval training does so more. Low-intensity cardio refers to anything that's in zone 2 of your max heart rate or below that. That's less than 70% of your max heart rate. High-intensity training is usually zone 4 and 5, or over 80% of your max heart rate. However, a recent meta-analysis found that over the course of a longer training period, like 10-15 weeks, low-intensity endurance training continued improving steadily, and the overall VO2max gains were ultimately similar. The same analysis found that in the first few weeks, sprint interval training is even better than high-intensity interval training. However, the benefits of sprint interval training plateau out after 10 weeks, after which HIIT training becomes more effective. In the ultra-long term, traditional endurance training catches up, and might even be superior. So intervals work faster, but aerobic volume keeps working over a longer period of time. Training frequency matters too. Six weekly sessions produces larger VO2max and mitochondrial gains than four, but four outperforms two sessions. Now, the problem is that frequency partly reflects total volume. Having more exercise sessions means that you're just training more, you're accumulating more hours, but the total hours at the end of the day is what matters most. You don't need to train six days a week, the practical target is enough weekly work, distributed across sessions you can recover from. So what it means is that in the short term, higher-intensity interval training and sprint interval training will increase VO2max faster, but eventually you will hit the plateau, and this is where this low-intensity aerobic exercise is quite important. I actually increased my VO2max from 53 to 66 by mostly doing low-intensity zone 2 cardiovascular exercise, and I did minimal types of high-intensity exercise. Here's the workout plan that I followed. Three days a week resistance training focused on strength, no cardiovascular effect at all. Two to three times a week zone 2 cardio for 50 to 60 minutes. Once a week, more intense intervals, mostly two to four minute intervals at near maximum intensity for three to four rounds. The reason might have been that I was already quite fit as suggested by the meta-analysis, so I couldn't have gotten that many benefits from the short interval training. So the ultimate message is that ideally you want to do both types of training. As a beginner, you might benefit more from the higher-intensity training, but as you get more advanced, and the longer you train your VO2max, the more dependent you become of the regular traditional zone 2 cardio. You might have also heard that about 40% of people don't respond to low-intensity exercise, and therefore they need to do high-intensity exercise. Yes, in some studies quite a lot of people don't see improvements on a standardized program. However, it's seen that increasing the weekly training volume will make almost every non-responder start responding. You don't always need to increase training intensity, you just need to increase training volume. And the reason I harp on this kind of low-intensity training is that doing low-intensity training is lower barrier of entry. Yes, you might need a little bit more time, but it's easier. Most people aren't prepared to do all-out intervals, but doing zone 2 cardio is effortless basically. Based on this, a logical and rational way to approach increasing VO2max is this. If you're unfit, VO2max less than 40, then you can keep lifting weights and walking to improve your general fitness. Aim for up to 10,000 steps a day, while lifting weights a few times a week. If your VO2max is over 40, then add some form of aerobic exercise. I would still start with zone 2 cardio because it's low-intensity, whereas the resistance training already is high-intensity, but it doesn't really matter at this point that much. You just need to add some form of aerobic exercise. If your VO2max is over 50, you need a mix of zone 2 cardio and either HIIT or sprint interval training. Both HIIT and sprint interval training works, with a few nuances that I'll share. If your VO2max is over 60, then you just need to increase the total volume of doing all of your cardio training. More intervals, more zone 2, etc. What matters the most is the total weekly volume of how much cardio are you doing. An interesting study just recently saw that you can get equal VO2max adaptations if you train only twice a week. The catch is that you need to train twice as long on those workout days. There was a high-frequency group that trained 4 times a week. 2 times a week for 35 minutes of continuous cardio at around 80% max heart rate, and 2 times a week of HIIT at 4 minute intervals at 95% max heart rate, rest 3 minutes, repeat for 4 rounds. Then there was the weekend warrior group, followed the same exact workout plan, but they worked out only twice a week on the weekends. 1 day for 70 minutes of continuous cardio at 80% max heart rate, and 1 day for the HIIT intervals, 4 minutes at 95% max heart rate, rest 3 minutes, repeat for 8 rounds. What it means is that if you don't have time to workout 4 times a week, you can get the same results by just consolidating all the workouts into 2 days. So this discovery has its pros and cons. It means that you can compress your workouts into 1 or 2 days, but you just need to do twice the amount of volume. Realistically, you want to do this, 70 minutes of zone 2 cardio per week, ideally in 1 session. If you do like 120 minutes of zone 2 cardio per week, then you can do it in 2 sessions. But if you do less than 70, then do it in 1 session. Zone 2 cardio works best if the session is slightly longer, rather than just 20 or 30 minutes. 30 minutes of HIIT interval training either in 1 session or multiple sessions. Because the intensity is higher, you can divide it into 2 sessions, but 1 session is also time efficient. If you are doing HIIT interval training, how long should the intervals be then? A 2019 meta-analysis of 53 studies saw that all intervals, even short intervals of less than 30 seconds, are effective in increasing VO2max. However, for maximum benefits, longer intervals that last over 2 minutes, done for over 15 minutes, and done for over 4-12 weeks are better. So basically, longer intervals, more intervals over a longer period of time. One popular method of doing HIIT is the 4x4 Norwegian method. Basically, 4 minute intervals at 85-95% of your max heart rate, repeated for 4 rounds, with 3-4 minutes of rest at low intensity in between. In total, it's a 32 minute workout. A 2016 randomness trial on overweight and obese people show that HIIT training with the Norwegian 4x4 for 6 weeks was superior to 10 1 minute intervals of HIIT and 45 minutes of moderate continuous training in increasing VO2max. So if you're going to do interval training, then the Norwegian 4x4 method is one of the best ones. However, it's also the most brutal one because it's so long and it's so difficult. And to be honest, that's the reason I wouldn't recommend beginners to try to do the Norwegian protocol because it's just too difficult and you're not that fit yet. If your VO2max is low, you can effectively increase your VO2max with a much easier type of training. You don't need to go to the hardest training immediately. You should keep the hardest training for the time when your VO2max is already high. If your VO2max is over 55, for example. If you're just starting out with VO2max training, then you could try the sprint interval training instead. It's a lot shorter and still effective, although not as effective as longer intervals. A 2017 meta-analysis of sprint interval training found that 2 to 3 sprints, basically 20 seconds all out, may be enough to increase VO2max. And 4 to 7 sprints could be more than necessary, as long as the sprints are done all out effort. More sprints increases fatigue, but it may provide diminishing returns. Zone 2 still matters because it allows you to accumulate much more aerobic volume with less fatigue. You can recover from it faster, while still building your mitochondrial power. As I showed before, the benefits of low intensity cardio start appearing mostly after 10 plus weeks of training. So if your goal is to really increase your VO2max, having some zone 2 should be part of the strategy, although you don't need zone 2 to reach a VO2max of 50. So based on all of this research, a realistic VO2max protocol would be this. Aim for 2 to 3 cardio sessions per week, 1 being harder and 2 being lighter and easier. First, perform 50-60 minutes of zone 2 twice a week. You can jog, cycle, row or walk uphill. Keep the pace conversational, approximately 60-70% of your maximum heart rate. Second, perform 1 interval workout per week. If you're unfit and a beginner, start with a sprint interval training. 3 20 second all out sprints done once a week. If you're already fit, then do the 4x4 Norwegian protocol. You can also start with 4 rounds of 2 minute intervals at 85-95% of max heart rate, but over time you should progress to 4 minutes. In the classic Norwegian study, the 4x4 method increased VO2max by 7.2% in 8 weeks. You should follow this for about 8-12 weeks. If you see that your progress is slowing down, then instead of increasing intensity, adding more high intensity exercise, you should try to do more volume with a low intensity exercise. You don't always need to do high intensity exercise to see progress, and in fact it can actually slow down your progress, because high intensity exercise also requires more time to recover from it, whereas low intensity exercise basically requires no recovery. And if you're doing intervals that are shorter, then increase the length of those intervals. If you're doing 20 second sprints, try to do the 2 minute Norwegian method, and then from the 2 minutes, go for 4 minutes for the original Norwegian 4x4 method. That's the most realistic protocol for most people. 2 light cardio sessions and 1 harder cardio per week. You don't need a VO2max of 101, not even 60, but ideally you do want to get a VO2max that's over 50, and keep it over 50 for as long as possible, because VO2max declines with age, and if you stop training your VO2max, then it's going to decline even faster. Most people fail because they can't choose a routine that they will be able to stick to. Yes, there are multiple ways you can increase VO2max. Different type of cardio sessions, doesn't have to be exactly the 4x4, or exactly sprint interval training. The main idea is to your heart rate, with a mix of the zone 2 type of exercise, and high intensity type of exercise. I've also made a video where I compare the different HIIT protocols, and I give my rating for each of them. Check out this video next.