VO2 Max Gains: Insights from the Latest Endurance Training Study

this is the Everyday Athlete

you know, this is the everyday athlete

you know, a lot of us are more about the health and longevity and wellness.

And we'll how a lot of us are more about the health and longevity and well-being

And for

smartly, wisely, still doing the jobs that we have to do to be family, men and women. you know, so you wanna function very well in those ones too. So it's like

thinking versus feeling. So you gotta develop the field as to how much

of these I wanna have in my program. And those are always an individual

answer to those. But Athletica can give you a good guide.

Hello and welcome to the Athletes Compass podcast where we navigate training, fitness and health for everyday athletes. What if we told you that the hardest workouts might also deliver the biggest fitness gains, but they come at a steep recovery cost and require a big base with a lot of recovery? We're going to continue some discussions we've had into VO2 max work based on a study done by Ingvill Auden.

Yeah, for sure. It's making a lot of noise on the Twittersphere and elsewhere. But basically what the incredible study that Ingvill did for her masters, she was telling me, she's a student in Norway where she works with a these, they have these sports schools. Marjaana will know about them right where, do you know much about these, Marjaana, these sports schools?

Well, I went

in one.

You went to one. So what's

Wow.

what? Let's just start there because that's our subject base. So Mariana, what happens at these sports schools?

are you talking about the sports high schools?

Yeah, there's sports- I think there's sports high schools, yeah.

Yes,

I went to, all Nordic countries have them. So basically from ninth grade, you will go to high school if you qualify as an athlete. So there is training during school hours for your sport. Plus then you get high school education, but basically you...

You get to train school hours. that's, that's pretty fun. You go to school to train. It's a pathway to become an athlete down the road. Typically you have to qualify for those and then they feed into the universities with the sports science.

You go to school to train, basically.

I'm

Yeah, perfect. So you've kind of set the stage. Now this is somehow our subject pool and I guess these are older athletes. They must be of a consenting age. But imagine now in these sports school centers where you've got enough equipment, VO2 max carts, where every single training session you do under like

being measured with a mouthpiece to see exactly how much oxygen uptake and carbon dioxide output that you do. That's the situation, right? And this is like over a very long period of time, like over a year, right? And these are quite well-trained cyclists that are doing these studies. They range from, I think, 10 to 12 hours per week.

so in this study, guys, what they did was they performed five by eight minute intervals at around their 40 minute high sustainable mean power output, right? So just above their threshold. So it's only slightly defined as interval training. But anyways, they did this across nine

weeks. Across those nine weeks, they did 21 of these interval training sessions, 22 of these cyclists. Now, they did after they did all this and all this oxygen uptake analysis was they retrospectively reanalyzed the data. I should also mention these are highly trained athletes. VO2max, amine VO2max,

The O2 max, the green O2 max

of 67.1 liters of oxygen per minute per kilogram,

of 67.1, which is a minute a kilogram, right?

Sorry, 19 males, three females. Okay, so what they found at the end was when they put these 22 cyclists into two groups, those that adapted and those that didn't, was that those that adapted,

were able to exercise at a higher percentage of that VO2 max during these sessions, right? And because every single session was analyzed with that gas analyzers, they could actually tell what percentage of oxygen they were working at. So this was kind of the cool thing that I was debating with Ingvill about was, well, they all trained just as hard.

was, well, they all trained just as

hard. Harkin was, you know, right to max or very hard at the end. Like, wasn't a factor of working harder or foretelling an athlete to work harder to get this result.

RPE was right to max or very hard at the end. It wasn't a factor of working harder or telling an athlete to work harder to get this result, to train

at a higher percentage of VO2 max. Something else had to go on. And the long story, to make it short, is ultimately when we retrospectively analyzed the training volume, the base training,

it was those athletes with more base training, more training in the low volume, sorry, the low intensity, zone one, that was associated with that, being able to exercise at that high percentage of VO2 max. So this just all comes back to saying the base period is important. So if you're picking up this podcast and you're in sort of those early winter months, to, later,

winter months to earlier spring months, you should be laying down mostly base work right now. That base work is going to allow you to perform these HIIT intervals with quality at a higher percentage of your VO2 max. That makes you adapt to the training. That is the general gist.

This work is going to allow for more people to involved with...

So there's a 90 % VO2 max number that's kind of thrown out there. That's the optimal level. But is there, was there a specific percentage of VO2 max that the study identified as optimal for the intervals?

The higher, higher, the better. think like they were all, you know, again, there was like an absolute power that they were going. So they're going at their mean, 40 minute power basically. So your 40 minute power is if you're an athletic, a user, it's ultimately your critical power. Right. Or your critical running speed. So that's the, they're at that power or just slightly higher. And again, you want to be exercising at a high percentage of that.

Okay.

that VO2, but that's dictated by your physiology, right? It's kind of almost sort of beyond your control. These athletes are all gritting it out as best they can, right? They're all trying their best. They can't go any harder ultimately than what they're going. So it's like the process before that is what needs to be sort of the focus. that's the thing that maybe if you're listening to this, this is what you can control.

It's of almost something beyond your control.

think about yourself, are you laying down the appropriate exercise training base to support your quality work later on? That's really what I think you need to, that's the message that we wanna be putting forth here.

So what are some of the, you know, at that, you know, we'll talk about the base and we'll talk about how that all works for the intervals themselves. What are some of those physiological adaptations that occur at a higher percentage of VO2 max that make these particular intervals going harder, make them so effective?

That is a good question. That's a really good question. And again, I think I'm just guessing, has there any other guess? I think it would be cardiovascular mostly. We often say that it's very much VO2 max per se is a delivery aspect. If we had to pick, I was always taught this by my wiser professors when I was taking classes was that

If we looked at the hierarchy of the potential limits within the human body, we've got, you know, could be a lung issue, ventilation issue. It could be a heart issue in terms of its delivery of that oxygenated blood, or it could be a peripheral uptake issue. So let's start with the lung issue. You know, how much, you know, if our lungs are...

know, inefficient, can that affect the delivery of that oxygen? A little bit, but it's usually not the problem. What about the periphery and the uptake? And usually that's not an issue either. If you can deliver the oxygen to the blood, or sorry, to the working muscles, they'll pull it up. And we know this because, know, acutely, like if we dope, right, if you get a blood transfusion or if you get a EPO,

it happens very quickly and you get that response. So it kind of comes back to the big central, the biggest impactor on your endurance and performance aerobic power is usually the power of the heart. So it's the cardiac output, the ability of that heart to deliver that oxygenated blood. So I would hazard to guess that the reason is somehow we were able to get a

better contractility in the ventricles, the powerhouses that deliver that oxygenated blood to the working muscles. Somehow that happened more efficiently when there was base behind the athlete. And I'd love it if Marjaana could almost give us her insight because as far as I can tell, when I watch Marjaana in her training,

Hmm.

over these last couple months. And you know, if you're a regular listener to the Athletes Compass podcast, you'll know that Mariana competed at the Ironman World Championships. So to do an Ironman, you've got to have this huge base behind you. But what was fascinating was that in this last couple months, she has just been hitting it out of the park when she does her HIIT sessions, which...

Most of us all know she conducts these HIIT sessions for us on either Velocity or on Zwift. And there's a big group that follows her. What you don't know and that we're gonna reveal right now is that her power has gone up and up and up and up and up and she is hitting personal bests on all of her power measures. So why would that be occurring when

you

She's not even training like she was for Ironman. She's training almost less, but she's going so incredible on the bike. Mariana.

Thank you. Yeah, it's been really fascinating because I took kind of a break after September, just moving my body, but not really training hard. And I'm just hitting new power numbers like never before. And then I've been thinking of it and

Looking back, I trained really hard. I trained a lot. June, July and August. volume, yes, a lot of volume. And even before that, because I did the Texas in April. So the whole year has been kind of like increasing volume up until the World Champs. But

Volume, right?

Also, what I did this summer was heat training. And what does heat training do? Right? My stroke volume would have gotten up because of the heat training. So my heart got more efficient based on the heat and like heat, like temperature heat and the amount of training that I did. Then

Mm-hmm.

you

I was able to recover from all that after Iron Man, plus that I switched a little bit to heavy strength training and these high intensity interval training. Like I've always done the heat sessions, but I just kept doing it and then reduced volume, which in retrospective kind of reminds me of a saying, skiers are made during summer.

So if you're looking at traditional cross-country skiing training, they train a lot of volume during the summer. One reason is it's nice outside, you know. It's summer, it's easy to do running, Nordic walking, biking, all these things. And then volume gets reduced for the winter and, you know, weekends.

We do racing, so you get high intensity there. And that's how they, how they peak for, for skiing season. So a lot of volume during the summer and fall.

Yeah.

So that's my thinking why I got better as I stopped training for Ironman.

But you would also put in a ton of volume and now you're in a sense, if I'm hearing Paul correctly, you're reaping those rewards because your basis has been so big, you're now able to go much harder in the intervals.

Yep.

Yeah. So we, you know, we're speculating. don't have, you know, metabolic cart on, on Mariana like, like Ingvild did on all of her athletes. But you know, if we're, if we're to guess and we're to try to explain why all of a sudden her power output is massively, I don't know what the percentage improvement has gone Mariana, but, even just like the absolute quantification of the power, like any, any numbers that you would, yeah. You remember?

It's hard to put numbers on it because I'm coaching in the same time when I'm doing these heat sessions. But I remember like targeting 330 watts earlier this year, and now it's closer to 394,000 watts. So it's massive. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, that's just huge. Yeah.

Those are massive numbers for the

HIIT sessions.

Yeah, I'm kind of mind blown.

Mm-hmm.

And I want to say like for everyday athletes that I've been doing these heat sessions, 30, 30s, 40, 20s for a long time now. And it took a long, long time to actually see a big increase like this. So this is why we're talking about it, right? Like it takes time and it takes consistently doing these sessions. And I started.

coaching these sessions a year ago. So I've been putting like every single week for a year. I've been doing this.

You have, you have, and a little bit like Forrest Gump, you know, there's more and more people that are following you now as well when you do these sessions on Velocity, which is just fantastic. And I'm trying to join you there as much as I can. And yeah, it's quite exciting. Talk to us, Marjaana, about the Velocity platform that you are leading and coaching on. And talk us, talk.

Mm-hmm.

Tell us about your experience there. What are you enjoying? What are you finding interesting about the whole platform?

Yeah, and Paul too. can coach there too. Or, is coaching there too? Yes.

Well, we have to give Paul full credit for bringing

us onto this. So yeah, over to YouTube for these sessions. What are your thoughts?

Yeah, I love it because there's the community aspect. Everybody can join, come in, do their thing. I'm trying to coach them as good as I can. yeah, they get live coaching or replays after, but live coaching is where the magic lies, I think. Yeah.

is, it is.

And a lot of my junior athletes have been joining my classes on velocity. And it's just been a blast. You know, they're texting each other while they're doing things. I don't know how they do that. You know, I'm like dying, but they're texting each other saying, you know, and they're, they're trying to laugh at my dumb jokes. and, it's, it's been a lot of fun.

It is a lot of fun, like we have people from Europe, West Coast, East Coast, everywhere joining.

Yeah, but

there's so many really cool features that the guys at Velocity have embedded within the platform that I'm just so impressed with. There's these bands that you can kind of target. And then they've gamified it as well. There's a point system that's in there that's so fun that's just addictive. I was on your session there, Mariana, and you

Mm-hmm.

I was totally beat up, but I saw Cindy Maloney starting to beat me. So I was like, my God, I can't let Cindy beat me. Of course she did beat me, but it was fun. was messing with my head really in a good way. It got a little bit more out of me. Just how they've gamified everything with the power bands and the heart rate bands. And you as coach can see all that. And you're egging me on and it's like, come on, prof, let's get going. was so good.

Hahaha

Yep.

Yeah, it's fun because you can gamify it and anyone can climb up a leaderboard to the podium. You don't have to produce high power. You get points.

You get points for being

in your own band that's personal to you.

personal to you. Yeah, so that's amazing. And then I can give, you know, points like if you're tanked and I see you, if I could see you that you're tanked, I can recommend you to rest the next interval and pick it up again after, you know.

didn't know that. Really?

I didn't know

that either, can you really?

So these are, you know, the sessions both that Odin talked about in the velocity sessions, they're tough and you're going pretty much all out. What's the recovery cost of these high intensity kind of intervals compared to other types of training? Do we need to be more mindful of recovery the next day, of food intake afterwards?

Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, whenever you do a HIIT session, it's stress, right? Any exercise is stress, but we know that the stress above threshold, HIIT sessions in particular, is added stress, right? And we see this, we can see this through classic heart rate variability data, which you get in Athletica as well if you're monitoring that on the Garmin system. So, you know, you've got to be mindful of that.

There's great gains to get as the Oden study shows, but at the same time, you you can get too much of a good thing and you can downward sort of spiral.

Again, so fortunate you can see this in Athletica now. And in your daily summary, just click over your coach avatar's head. It'll even sort of show, you know, your coach avatar will talk to you. And usually the last paragraph in there is something about your heart rate variability and how that's tracking seven day relative to 60 day, which is just incredible that that's just at your fingertips now for you and your coach. So yeah, you do need to be mindful.

of that, as Kimber told us in the last episode, it's kind of this thinking versus feeling. You really sort of have to feel also, how are you feeling after that session? Does the next session tomorrow still look good? And speaking of the next session, well, we often say the most important session is the next session. And with that in mind, again, the recommendations are always to leave one or two in the tank.

in those intervals, right? So don't totally bin yourself, even if your coach is encouraging you to. Marjaana I'm looking at you.

Let's talk about long intervals like these eight minutes versus short intervals like our 30-30s. What are the pros and cons of long intervals?

Sure.

Yeah, well, this, think this kind of goes back to that other study that you were, you know, briefly mentioning off offline, Marjaana is, is that they're kind of showing some differences between the shorts and the longs. Now the, the short story is that some people are more suited to the short intervals and some people are more suited to the long intervals. And it kind of comes back to your, you your God given genetic makeup, how much fast, which

muscle fiber predominance you have versus how much slow twitch muscle fiber dominant. Where you say the slow twitch people are diesel engines, they go and go and go all day. And then the fast twitch individuals are, you know, they're the, call them the twitchies and then there's a hybrid. So you're kind of somewhere in between. So with the short intervals, those tend to be much more suitable.

And when I say short interval, I'm talking things like 30 30s or 30 15s. It turns out those are much more suitable for your fast twitch type individuals because there's a break in the middle there which causes the muscle to, you know, resaturate with oxygen and it winds up being lower in lactate. And when it's lower in lactate, it tends to be a lower sympathetic response. So it's not gonna bin you as much.

Now you think of the alternate and know, twitchies, if you know you're twitchy or you know you're hybrid, think about doing like five minutes almost all out. It's really, you are gonna feel that, right? You know you're gonna feel just absolutely binned after that. Like imagine doing, you know, five by three minutes or five by five minutes. Like these are really hard. It's just a lot of lactate buildup and you're gonna feel really tired.

for the end. Now, of course, if you're listening to this and you know you're a diesel engine, you're just kind of like, oh yeah, I do that and I back that up, no problem. Great, but it's different horses for different courses, right? Different courses for different horses, sorry. So that's kind of the trick and we're working on various different ratios and fractions in the backend with Andrea and his team. That's coming soon.

But at this point in time, you kind of still need to develop your feel to know what you are or your coach can discuss that with your coach. They can kind of help you know what you might want to do one or the other. Very cool is that Workout Wizard will almost always have the option to do one or the other. you can always swap it. If you're getting a long interval and you want to swap it to short,

that's in Workout Wizard. If you have short and you want to switch it to long, just click on Workout Wizard and you can do that. So that's kind cool.

So let me clarify something on that. So if I'm a twitchy rider and that's my skill set, it's better to do the 30 30s as opposed to doing something that might benefit the longer term kind of intervals. Okay.

Yeah,

yeah, you're absolutely, absolutely for a couple of different reasons. First of all, you want to actually get in, you want to dig into that higher recruitment threshold with those 30 30s. You are still creating the let's call it the fatigue resistance that you want. You're giving it those fast twitch fibers, the stimulus to create more mitochondria.

to become more fatigue resistant. So you're getting all of that. But it's not as centrally taxing. When I say centrally taxing, I'm thinking of your whole central nervous system. It's not as totally flogged and run down at the end of the whole thing. So back to the next session is the best, the most important session. You still can kind of do that next session if you've done a short interval.

versus the opposite way. So you're still getting the full aerobic benefits, doing it short, but you're able to repeat. you get the best of both worlds. And yeah, it's a hard decision to make for both athlete and coach who's thinking the principle of specificity. I must prepare for a X number of all out kind of work.

Hmm.

And my FTP has increased. Yeah.

Of it raises the whole curve. You wanna raise the whole

curve and it does, it does. So there's better roads to Rome ultimately and that's one of them. And it depends on how you're made up.

I would also argue that the 30-30s or the short interval is better for everyday athletes who have high stress, sleep bad and are...

are on verge of being a bit of bit of cooked or

Yeah, like me the other day, remember? Remember I was like, woke

up, was, you started at 6.30, I woke up like literally 6 a.m. I so bent from four hours back country skiing, but I could still participate at least a little bit in your 30, 15 session, right? It wasn't great, but I could still, and if you had done, if you were doing five by five minutes, I mean, I'd been out right away, right away.

Yeah.

and I pity and I...

Yeah, yeah.

And so you've recovered better from these ones. They kind of, you know, elevated you, at least mentally after I bet, which usually usually happens with these 30 30s. Like you feel so elevated instead of bent and ready to nap right after. But for example, for Perimenopausal women and

Totally. Yeah.

Yeah.

and menopausal women, these are dynamite because they don't tank you. Like just the one set of five times 30, 30s, you HIIT the target, away, you and you've produced that high power. You've woken up, you're fast with muscle fibers. You've given them that signal and then you walk away. You're done in half an hour.

Mm-hmm.

you

Like you do a warmup, you do one set of five times 30, 30s, really hard, go all out for 30 seconds, and then you recover after. You're done. Like what is the better way? Like I'm such a convert now. I used to do this.

five minute, eight minute, even like 16 minute, all like super hard. And I was, that put me in over training bin, you know, like crazy.

So Paul, are there any risks in doing these? mean, obviously we probably don't want to do these things every day. Are there risks to putting these into our program?

Well, the only, again, even in the off season, you know, we talk all about the base. I still like to have one HIIT session, just like, like what Marjaana was kind of just saying, right? Like just that, that one 30 minute HIIT session, you can do one or one to three sets of these, these 30 thirties in the week, right? And it just, the studies show basically that if you do that in your off season or your base, you come back and you start the build phases in a much superior.

in a much superior

sort of state. those are very, I guess, benign.

sort of phase. those are very, I guess, benign,

not so stressful, but the limitations or the precautions would be if you're doing this all the time, right? Like if you're doing too much of this, then you can get too much of a good thing. And you just probably don't want to do HIIT sessions every, unless you are an absolute elite.

guru than, you know, like I was looking at some of Magnus Ditlev's work in training and it's redonkulous how fast and hard these kind of goes, right? And I know Alistair, Alistair Brownlee, he had incredible high intensity, consistent moments. So you do indeed work up to those in certain phases. There are contexts and people that get to that level.

So you do indeed work up to those in certain phases. There are podcasts. you pull, then you get to that level.

But you know, this is the Everyday Athlete podcast and you know, a lot of us are more about the health and longevity and wellness.

But you know, this is the everyday athlete podcast. And we'll how a lot of us are more about the health and longevity and well-being

And for us, it's doing this smartly, wisely, still doing the jobs that we have to do to be family, men and women. you know, so you wanna function very well in those ones too. So it's like back to Kimber's message that she gave, develop that feel.

Right, thinking versus feeling. So you gotta develop the field as to how much that I wanna have in my, of these I wanna have in my program. And those are always an individual sort of answer to those. But Athletica can give you a good guide.

All right, what else we got for VO2 max? Am I missing anything in the questions that I'm asking you to?

I think we got everything.

I I think we...

I think we got it. mean, you know,

let's just be, you know, let's define VO2 max, right? We're talking about the maximal oxygen uptake, right? So the things that you can, we had a, I've forgotten his name, was Elias, right? And he was from Finland as well, Mariana. And he studies VO2 max specifically. And he was telling, you know, he actually studies all the different limitations in the areas. And which is so important because that

Mm-hmm.

that transfer of oxygen from the working environment into your mitochondria where they're be burnt and produced ATP, you're get your energy. It's just important to look at all the various different limitations across that. So fundamentally, you're looking at the ability of your lungs to take in that oxygen and you can actually do respiratory muscle training to work on the, I guess, the ventilation.

If you've got stronger respiratory muscles, to actually bring in and ventilate the lungs, that will improve your VO2 max. We know that now. And then of course, all the HIIT sessions that are gonna bump up your heart muscle, the volume stuff as well, all of that conditions your heart. You can blood dope, but don't do that.

No.

But

like, this is the transport thing. the other remember, remember, we're learning that the other means of improving the hemoglobin transport, things like altitude, but also the poor man's altitude heat, right? So heat training. Yeah. Go Texas girl, right? Yeah. So when it's hot, that dilute that basically you, you, you sweat. and then you get more plasma volume and then

Heat training, yeah.

Houston, woo!

You

And this plasma volume, the water component, actually winds up tricking your kidneys to saying, it really looks like you're low in oxygen, you're hypoxic. We're gonna make some more hemo, you know, we're gonna make some more EPO and bump up your hemoglobin in your red blood cells. And that's what it does, right? So you get a larger blood volume. You get more of these red blood cells, which you want.

So that's another way you can enhance your VO2 max. And then last but not least, all this training that we're talking about, all is used to bump up the number of mitochondria, the organelles that are in the cells of the muscles mostly that consume that oxygen. So there's at least four ways that we've talked here about enhancing and VO2 max across the...

transport cascade from environment into the factory where they're going to be burnt when you're breaking down carbs, fats, and protein. There you go, you had a physiology lesson, everyone. like that.

I love it. I love it. I'm

Woo!

going

to be taking notes when we get done. So here are three takeaways from today's episode. Number one, when you're doing intervals, go hard because that's where the adaptation happens. If you join us on Velocity for our 30 30s or our workouts, other platforms will help you go harder than you think you can go. Number two is that

Hahaha!

Some people are suited to doing 30-30s or the short HIIT work because they're fast twitch. Others are more suited to doing the longer intervals, the eight minutes, the five minutes. It's whatever suits you best. And number three, the most important takeaway is what Paul said at the very beginning is that the importance of doing these intervals is that you have a big base, is that you build your base.

and that that should be the focus of what you do and your intervals will be better. And you will get more power out of it as evidenced by Marjaana's big FTP increase. And that's what it's all about.

get more power out of it as evidenced by Mariana's big FTP increase.

go Mariana. Thank you for exploring

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more information or to schedule a consultation with Paul Marjaana or myself? Check the links in the show notes for Marjaana Rakai and dr. Paul Laursen I'm Paul Warloski and this has been the athletes compass podcast Thank you so much for listening

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