Its a measure of your aerobic fitness, and you dont need a gadget to figure yours out.
The amount of oxygen directly correlates with the amount of energy produced.
Or, in simpler terms, the more work you do, the more oxygen you need.
A typical, sorta-fit human being will have a VO2max somewhere in the 30s or 40s.
If you exercise a lot, you’ve got the option to push that number higher.
Why is a high VO2max good?
To be able to use a large amount of oxygen, you need more than just good lungs.
You also need a strong heart and healthy circulatory system to get the oxygen to your muscles.
And you need muscles that are large and can do a lot of work per minute.
VO2max is a way to summarize a lot of important things about cardio fitness into one simple number.
But its important to know that this number isnteverythingabout fitness, or even aerobic fitness.
Men tend to have a VO2max about ten points higher than similarly fit women, for example.
You also dont usually know your exact VO2max anyway.
How can you measure your own VO2max?
(My best-ever mile time gets me a VDOT of 38, for example.)
I recall doing a test in a Phys Ed.
class once where we had to step up and down from a high box as many times as possible.
What does my watch tell me?
(The new Watch software is supposed to improve this calculation.)
Other fitness-tracking watches venture to estimate this number as well.
The VDOT chart I linked earlier lists a value of 33-34 formy half marathon finish timeof 2:08:28.
Ive never done a lab test, so I have no idea which is more accurate.
