Increase Your VO2 Max, Power Output, and Heart Health with These Simple Hacks!

Welcome to another insightful episode of the HealthSpan Digest Podcast with Aaron Shaw! In this episode, Aaron dives into the science and practical application of combining Zone 2 training with high-intensity workouts to dramatically improve your cardiovascular health and performance with just five hours of training per week. Whether you’re a time-crunched professional, an ambitious athlete, or someone aiming to extend their healthspan, this episode offers a simple, science-backed plan to achieve real, measurable results.

Aaron, a seasoned healthspan coach, shares his personal journey and the successes of his clients, emphasizing how this training regimen has enhanced VO2 max, power output, and overall cardiovascular efficiency. He breaks down the importance of heart rate training zones, particularly Zone 2 and Zone 4, and how spending dedicated time in these zones can lead to significant improvements in your health and athletic performance.

Tune in to learn how to optimize your training schedule, the benefits of Zone 2 for fat oxidation and mitochondrial function, and the powerful effects of high-intensity interval training. Whether you’re 25 or 75, this episode will equip you with the knowledge and motivation to transform your cardiovascular health with minimal time investment.

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Transcript

Aaron Shaw (00:00)
Longevity, performance, cardiovascular health through combining zone two training and high intensity training. So in just a couple of hours a week, I mean like five hours a week, you can get a massive benefit. I'm gonna share the science and I'm gonna share the results on what's worked for me. Again, not taking a ton of time, but to have very real measurable cardiovascular benefits and performance benefits in just a couple of hours a week

My name is Aaron Shaw. from HealthSpan PhysioCoaching and I work with clients on an individual one -on -one consultation, one -off consultations, as well as I have a handful of coaching clients that I've worked with for years. And these are people that are short on time, have really ambitious goals on extending their life, extending their healthspan, extending their performance. And my passion, my personal and very selfish passion is to learn as much as I can about healthspan.

Healthspan is the length of time within our lifespan that we are healthy, active and vibrant. And as a middle -aged guy, this is very, very important to me. Today, I really want to cover what is been very successful for me, very successful for, my coaching clients and is of course, 100 % backed by science. And this is a simple training plan, very simple

plan that I'm going to share with you that you can follow to improve your cardiovascular health, to improve your longevity, to improve your healthspan. And this is going to be valuable whether you are a 25 year old competitive cyclist who or somebody who's interested in competitive cycling and wants to really get the most return on their physical investment. This information is going to be very valuable to you. If you are 75 years

80 years old, this is also going to be critically important for you to learn and listen to as well. We're going to talk about a way that within five hours a week or so, you can change, you can improve your cardiovascular health. We're talking about the efficiency of how your heart works. We're talking about speeding recovery after exercise, after a strenuous activity. We're talking about improving your having metabolic benefits such as burning fat and controlling blood sugar.

We're talking about improving blood flow, which is what really provides nutrients to your working muscles. So this is vitally important to all of us. What I would ask you to do is comment on this video. If you're watching this on YouTube or message me, if you're listening to this on a podcast platform and tell me what percentage of your schedule, what percentage of your week of training, do you spend training in zone

two on endurance level of effort. So what percentage of your training week do you spend training in zone two endurance? We're going to break down heart rate training zones today. We're going to talk about exactly what zone two means. And if you're an endurance athlete, you've probably been clubbed over the head with this, but I want to really kind of make it crystal clear on the, on the very real undisputed benefits of this training zone and the value of the training zone. We're going to dive into.

the harder training zones, is going to be really kind of mostly focusing on zone four. So that's going to be an uncomfortable effort, but also thankfully with this plan I'm going to share with you is going to be a very short amount of time that you need to spend any time in this zone. And I'm going to leave you with one thing you can do today. This one thing you can do today is just going to be following this, this very simple plan that I'm going to lay out for you that again, within five hours a week at a minimum, I certainly if you

invest more than that for your cardiovascular health. And especially if you are performance driven, more would be better. But I can tell you from very personal experience, five hours a week will move the needle. For example, I, a couple of weeks ago got my VO2 tested. So that was getting on a bike, putting a mask on, to this little laboratory kind of place. And they put me through this training program or this test.

where I was peddling harder and harder and harder over a couple of minutes time. And what this does is it finds identifies your maximum amount of oxygen that, you your body can take in, your body can utilize. And there are ranges for, you know, being unhealthy and being very healthy. And it's also broken down into ages. So you can get a, for a person of your age, you should have a certain range of VO2, a volume of oxygen that your body can consume.

I was very happy after this test to see that mine was in the highest category for a guy my age in my fifties. And so that's great. And so the, me, that was the test of, of proving that what I'm doing is giving me the result that I want, the health benefit that I want. And that's just, you know, I can look at that in a couple of different ways. One is the, you know, I get them, I'm an occasionally competitive cyclist, mountain biker these days. And

that having that higher VO2 number is great. So I can think, that's really going to help. You know, I leverage that, I utilize that when I do compete, but even more importantly, it's a sign of the, my healthspan potential, my healthspan potential is very much related to how much oxygen my body can utilize. And I want to take that into very, very old age, but it takes a little bit of work, a little bit of attention, which is what we're going to cover today.

I can also tell you from personal experience from following this plan that my power output, my ability to produce energy specifically through my legs, through my body when I'm on my bike has improved, improved dramatically in about an eight week block. When I first started doing this, I really kind of get back on the bike and started doing this for about eight weeks. I spent a chunk of time following this plan and my power output, which I could track on my indoor trainer.

increased 50 watts when I'm pedaling in what we call zone two, an endurance level of effort, which is, as we'll talk about in a minute, not a lot of effort. It's very sustainable. It's very doable. is conversational. Your breathing and heart rate allows you to still have conversations so you're not huffing and puffing. But to pedal along in that effort, again, pretty comfortable.

The amount of power that I'm able to put out now compared to when I first started this program is 50 watts higher. So I'm not pedaling harder, same level of effort, massive increase in power output. That is between those 50 watts, which that's very clearly like a performance measure, but also with those 50 watts plus this VO2 measure, which is good for performance, obviously.

but also very good for an indicator of cardiovascular health. Those are great. And it was done in a simple, very easy to follow program, which I'm going to tell you what that is. But first let's understand what are heart rate training zones? So heart rate training zones means it's in reference to what somebody's maximum heart rate is. So we all have a maximum heart rate.

And for those of us that have touched that maximum heart rate, it is not comfortable. It's very, very hard. You kind of suffer for a period of time to get to that point, but whatever your maximum heart rate is, the heart rate zones are based off of percentages of that maximum heart

So if you are asleep, if you're sitting on the couch reading a book, you're probably in zone one. That's a very low, it's your just sort of low at rest heart rate. Zone two, which I'm gonna talk about here, zone two is we would say moderate intensity. And this is typically 65 to 75 % of your maximum heart

conversational pace, 65 to 75 % of your maximum heart rate. So if you were pedaling your bike down the green way next to your friend and you're not coasting, you're actually pedaling, you're working a little bit, but you're having a conversation and nobody's huffing and puffing and spit and snot dribbling out of your face, you're probably in zone two. You're probably in a conversational pace. You're probably at 70 % of your maximum heart

And that is awesome. The benefits of spending time in this zone two is you have improved aerobic capacity. So the first thing that happens is it allows you to have better oxygen delivery to your muscles. So you're in an aerobic zone. Your body depends on oxygen to function in this zone two. Again, 70 % of your maximum heart

And it allows you to do this over a long period of time. If you were going to go for 45 minutes, an hour, a couple hours, a hike or a ride or whatever it is, wherever aerobic activity you're doing, it's just that, can't even help but say it's aerobic. It is utilizing oxygen, which is

Training in this zone enhances your fat oxidization. So what that means is your body is actually utilizing fat as an energy source, which we all want. And so it utilizes fat as energy. We all have a bunch of stored energy, which is great. When you can stick it and stay in this zone 2 and be honest about staying in this zone 2 70 % of your maximum heart rate, your body will focus on burning through fat.

for energy and conserve glycogen stores and preserve these sugars that we need for higher intensity efforts. It'll save that, which we're gonna talk about tapping into those glycogen stores here in a minute. But as long as you're training in zone two, 70 % of your max heart rate, you're utilizing fat, which is great. Another benefit is mitochondrial function. Mitochondria, you may have heard of this. is their little energy.

producing cells, you will, a little, a little, power plants, I guess, the little power plants in our body. And it really promotes a function of this mitochondria in our, in your cells, but you have to stay in zone two to get that benefit. You're investing in a, in a power plant when you spend time in zone two. Now there'll be times when we go into higher zones, when you do higher effort things, where you're going to like want these power plants to really kick in and

producing power, but first of all, we have to build the foundation. We have to build the power plants. And if you do nothing but hop off and doing zone three, four, five high intensity or even just like, you know, moderately high intensity stuff, you're not building this mitochondria. You're not building these power plants. These power plants are built when we stay in zone two, invest in that. Think about that. Investing in zone two enhances your recovery from,

any sort of physical activity because it does increase your blood flow and helps deliver nutrients to your muscles. It increases your capillary density. And what that means is that when you spend time in this zone two, you grow little blood vessels to all of your muscles and you'll get even more vascularity, more oxygen delivered to your muscles, which is great, especially when you do want to do things that are more vigorous, more challenging, more physically challenging, because you'll have

power plants from the mitochondria and you'll have the fuel source because you'll have all of these little blood vessels that are growing in to feed the muscles to do whatever activity you want to do. Spending time in zone two will also help lower your resting heart rate. It will increase your heart rate variability, which is another great subject that I a previous episode on, but both are really good indicators of cardiovascular health. So it reduces stress on the heart. So if you can

perform, if you can function, if you can do things, especially vigorous things with less stress on the heart, again, whether you're 25 or 85, it is good. That's what we want. We want efficiency with our cardiovascular

Ultimately, there is a relationship of how robust your cardiovascular system can function at an endurance level at 70 to 75 % of your maximum heart rate that indicates really your longevity, your healthspan. It is a marker of health.

So that's zone two. where that is going to be a very big part of this program that I explained to you here in a minute. Just recognize that it takes discipline for those of us that are endurance athletes to get into this zone and to refrain from pushing into higher than 70 or 75 % of your max heart rate. Most people who, especially if you're involved in group rides or group runs,

Or you just go willy -nilly and train, do whatever you want. That's fine. But you're probably not spending very much time, not consistent time in this zone. And you're spending time in zones where they're a little bit more challenging. Zone three, zone four, or bouncing around in different training zones, which is fine. If that's what you want to do and you want to just go play and have fun and you're not concerned about improving your capacity, that's totally cool. But if on your mind, if you're thinking, I want to have

better performance, I want to have better cardiovascular health, you have to spend chunks of time in this zone 2 70 % of your max heart

I'll step off that soapbox momentarily. So now let's get into a hard training zone. And this would be, you may, you may hear high intensity interval training or VO2 training. And this is where you're going to be spending time, not much, but you're going to be spending some time in zone four. So four out of the five zones. So zone four is 80 to 90 % of your maximum heart rate.

So 80 to 90 percent. It is uncomfortable. This is the zone and you may have may hear like lactate or lactic acid. So what does that mean? So in this zone, your body, again, we've sort of bypassed this, the the zone where your body can utilize oxygen to produce energy. And now we're in an anaerobic zone, which means that there's anaerobic means without oxygen.

So once you're in these higher zones, specifically zone four, 80 plus percent of your maximum heart rate, your body is relying on energy sources that are stored in your muscles. It, because of the demands that you have from going at that intensity, your body cannot break down fat quick enough to provide the energy you need. So it just takes energy that you already have stored in your muscles, which is finite.

compared to oxygen, as long as you're not at altitude or something, there's plenty of oxygen around, but there's a finite amount of both. There's plenty of oxygen around and there's, for everybody that I know, we all have plenty of fat to use for energy sources, so it's all readily available. Now, once you're in zone four, or doing moderate and higher levels of intensity, now we're taking energy sources that are stored in our muscles and this energy source is limited.

and we burn through it pretty quickly.

So just need to be mindful when we're in this zone. in this zone, your body produces lactic acid, which is good, which is fine. I think it really freaks out. think, you know, that lactic acid burn we're familiar with what that feels like is your muscles feel. mean, you can certainly get like the burning sort of sensation. that is, think what we would think, we think acid, you think burning. So like how my legs are burning from lactic acid. Yes, that's definitely a sensation.

The other, the main sensation that I think of is that like a loss of energy. Like you just don't have, there's just this great sense of fatigue that you're trying to push through. And that means that the amount of lactic acid that is being produced from this level of effort exceeds your body's ability to clear out the lactic acid. So you start sort of bubbling up with lactic acid, if you will.

There is a way for your body to actually utilize lactic acid as a fuel. So it is not completely a bad thing. I lactic acid is a very natural product. It's very natural in our body. And it can actually, our body can actually utilize this lactic acid as a fuel source through this process from the, it's called the Cori cycle C O R I, which I'm not going to bother to bore you to death with that, but it can be utilized. But the key with spending time.

in this training zone, in this zone four, in the 85 or 90 % of your maximum heart rate is that you are training your body to flush out the lactic acid quicker, to be more efficient with flushing out that lactic acid, which means you can continue at a high level of effort longer if you're not accumulating so much of that lactic acid. So it is worth investing time for your cardiovascular health and certainly for

performance if you're so driven to improve your cardiovascular performance, your physical performance for any sort of endurance activity, then you're to want to improve this zone four training.

The last zone, I think is kind of built into the high intensity interval training that I'll talk about here is zone five. And that is 90 or 100 % of your maximum heart rate. The reality is you can only, that's very limited access to this. You can only do that for a very short burst of time. So if you're going to spend any time, if you're going to spend any time in a hard effort,

most of the time you're be kind of probably dancing between zone four and zone five. So you're be between 80 and 100 % of your max heart rate. Knowing that once you're up in like the 90 % of your max heart rate, you have probably a handful of seconds. This isn't gonna be, you don't hang out at 95 % of your max heart rate for 10 minutes, doesn't happen. You may redline at that 95 or 100 % for a couple seconds, then it's gonna drop down a little

then you may be able to push it back up a little bit, sustain it for a little bit longer, then it's going to drop back down. That is when your body is at the limit. So it cannot keep functioning at that, at that level. So high intensity interval training, as opposed to zone two, high intensity interval training, we're talking zone four, zone five, 80 plus percent of your max heart rate. But it has, again, awesome benefits. You're to be able to produce teaching your body how to produce more power, how

really maximize the aerobic capacity and anaerobic capacity of your body. When you combine the zone two training with high intensity interval training, are really, it's like the recipe for cardiovascular efficiency. Your VO2 max will increase, which again is a critical measure of your aerobic fitness and overall cardiovascular health. You're going to be improving blood flow to the muscles, which improves recovery

by combining the two, you're going to really be setting yourself up for continually being able to progress and adapt. And what I see with the athletes that I either hang out with or work with is that they tend to spend most of the time, this is again, mostly endurance athletes, but spend most of the time not going easy enough to be in zone two, not going easy enough to reap all those benefits of mitochondria

capillary density and efficiency. So they're not going easy enough for that, but also not going hard enough to reap the benefits of true high intensity training. And so on a typical group ride or a group run, most people are in the middle zone, which would be like a zone three, let's say. And it's utilizing a little bit of fat as an energy source, a little bit

stored energy glycogen for a higher intensity energy source, but it's not really helping either one very much. You're kind of missing the value of focusing on just one or just the other. back when I was racing full time on a road bike, we would call these junk miles because you're not really getting anything out of it. And I will, again, put in the caveat that if you

simply interested in going out, playing with friends, doing your group run, doing a group ride, and you don't care about improving your performance, then ignore all this. Just go play. conversely, if you only have an hour and a half, two hours a week to invest in your cardiovascular health, or certainly if you only have two hours a week to go ride your bike, then don't worry about training in zones. Just go out and play. But to be clear, if you do want to improve your performance,

and you're short on time, you don't have all day to train, you're not a sponsored athlete. If you have, let's say, five hours a week, this is where we're going get to the punch line here. If you have five hours a week or more, it'd be awesome if you have more, but if you have five hours a week to train, here's what I would suggest you do to improve your performance and to improve your cardiovascular health. 25 year old competitive athlete,

middle -aged dude with a lot on his plate and not much time, that's me, or whether you are long retired and you really want to boost your cardiovascular health and you only have five hours or so, here's what I suggest you do.

You're going to do four hours of zone two training, four hours. And you can do those in four, one hour blocks, or you can crank out an hour and 15, do 75 minutes on some of those days. So you don't have to do maybe quite as many days of training, but four of those hours are going to be spent at 70 % of your maximum heart rate.

four hours at 70 % of your maximum heart rate. That leaves you one other hour. That other hour, which would be one day per week, you're gonna do high intensity interval training. And that is gonna be getting your heart rate up to that uncomfortable zone where it's gonna be 85%, let's say 80 to 85 % of your maximum heart rate. It could be on a bike, could be running, any sort of cardiovascular activity.

but you're going to your heart rate up there and do that uncomfortable range. You're going to hold it there for at least four minutes. that's four minutes in an uncomfortable heart rate zone. And then you're going to rest for four minutes. And then you're going to repeat that four more minutes, high intensity, four minutes rest, four minutes, high intensity, four minutes rest. If you were just starting out on a program like

And you're especially if you're not accustomed to really kind of pushing yourself that hard, it is okay to say the first time you do this workout, just do a perform, just do four minutes of a sustained hard effort and call it quits. Just kind of feel what that feels like playing the long game here. This is we're talking about healthspan. isn't a overnight performance overnight, massive, beautiful cardiovascular health. This is the long game.

cut yourself some slack, it's fine to say today I'm going to try this high intensity effort. So I'm going to get on my bike or I'm going to get on the trail and go for a run, whatever it is. And I'm going to put in an effort. And this is also key of this year is putting in an effort that you can sustain for all four minutes. And what that means is when you look at the, watch and you say, okay, for the next four minutes, I'm going to get my heart rate up to 85 % of the maximum heart

recognize that the heart rate will take about a minute or so even just to kind of ramp up to get to that uncomfortable level. And that's where you want to stay. But if you take those first 30 seconds and sprint like, you know, like I see end of the world and you're going as hard as you possibly can for those first 30 seconds, you're going to blow up and you're never going to be able to sustain that for a full four minutes. So it takes a little bit of practice to learn how to gauge, how to gauge your effort.

This is where practice comes in. So try four minutes, ramp yourself up. Once you get to that, you know, the first minute, you may feel like not that big a deal. It's pretty sustainable. Second minute, assuming your effort is sustained, you're not going harder or easier, you're just sort of sustained. Second minute gets a little bit uncomfortable. Third minute of this level of intensity, definitely not comfortable. At this point, you're huffing and puffing, your heart rate's elevated quite a bit. You're breathing in and out pretty quickly. That fourth minute of the four minute interval,

is really uncomfortable and it feels like it lasts a long time. At the end of that four minutes, pull the plug, go easy for four minutes. You've just done one interval. That's a high intensity interval right there. And if you can repeat that, so if you do just one, first workout session doing this, great. The next time you do it, try two. Next time you do it, try three. Build your way

Every time you take this four minute block and you can invest in the level of effort and energy, you are making massive adaptations to your VO2 max, the volume of oxygen that your body can utilize. You're adapting your body, you're adapting your cardiovascular system in a way that is going to extend your healthspan, extend your lifespan, and really give you more capacity to do, I

Obviously, any day to day activity, you'll have more capacity for that, but you'll also have more capacity for the very challenging things like athletic endeavors.

So you have these five hours. You could break that up into three to four sessions of zone two per week. This is an hour to an hour and a half per session. And then one session of high intensity interval training, short, intense intervals with to start without at least two equal rest. So four minutes on four minutes off. That is

That is the absolute, I want to say in a sense, it's like the bare minimum. So if you really, really want to move the needle, if you follow this program and you do this for six weeks, definitely within eight weeks, you will feel like a different person. your body will adapt in a way that you will have measured sensation, know, measured sensations of more strength.

more capacity on the bike or running whatever your endeavor is. It's just day to day stuff. mean, you're literally at this point, if you follow this for eight weeks, you're going to have more little power plant cells, a mitochondria in your body. You're going to have more blood vessels fueling your muscles, fueling this mitochondria. And so you've got this nice big foundation that's continues to grow, especially if you stick with this even longer. And those high intensity is going to really kind of like give you that.

at the pyramid that is based upon that big foundation of zone 2

It is so hard for people, so hard for endurance athletes to stick with zone two training and it's as a detriment to performance. So the punch line that I would have for everybody is that if you have, first of if you have only an hour or two a week to go play and you like to, you know, hang out with friends doing running or cycling or whatever, just go do it. Don't worry about a structured training plan. It's not for you. That's totally

If you want to invest a period of time and actually end up performing better. So I'll use cycling and specifically mountain biking. Cause that's my jam right now. But to use mountain biking as an example, if you want to invest six or eight weeks of following a program like this, I promise you, if you're not already doing something like this, I promise you, will be a different rider in six or eight weeks. That is going to

Easier to get up and over hills. It is going to be easier to be in the lead group as opposed to getting dropped. You're going to recover faster from any sort of effort you do with anything. You will have an absolute physical change in eight weeks, five hours a week. That's it. That's all you need. What you do if you, you know, if you can do five hours structured in this way and you still have more time to go out, ride and play, do whatever you want.

It's okay to do those, you know, as I said earlier, like the junk miles. Yeah. Do those on other days. That's fine. But as long as you can stick with, you know, a couple, three days a week of, getting in those hours of zone to get one good structured, high intensity workout. And then if you still have more time, do anything that's extra credit. That's the big picture. The nuances of this is of course, incorporating rest, recovery, nutrition, electrolytes.

injury prevention exercises and a whole slew of other things to fine tune it. But if nothing else, without getting too caught up in the weeds, five hours a week, mostly zone two, an occasional zone five, zone four or five, really high intensity, your body will change. Try that for a couple of weeks. Comment and let me know how it goes. And if you're a little hesitant or if you have more, if you really want kind of some more information on the nuances of that or how to deal with

Send me a message, comment on the video, comment or leave me a message on the podcast platform. Happy to respond or read everything, respond to everything. But I can tell you from, you know, first of all, from many, many years of racing and riding and being an endurance athlete that this works. And now as my life has changed from pretty much racing full time to do a bunch of other stuff and not having a ton of time that from my personal experience, I

far more performance, far more physical benefit than I want to say almost like it more benefit than I should because I don't spend a whole lot of time training. if five hours a week is what I got and I can just be mindful of what I'm doing with that time, whether that's indoor on a trainer or outside on the trails, when done well, when done wise, I have a super fun time doing it. I'm keeping my foundation strong. I'm working on my VO two max.

the results for me speak for themselves, not only how I feel, but I'm the nerd that does go out and get VO2 tested on occasion. I get actual real scientific data. It's not just how I feel, but it's a win -win. you can do it too, whether you've never trained before a day in your life, whether you've been training for a long time, whether you're kind of off and on, like most people are kind of off and on, this works. Science shows it. Give it a shot. Let me know how goes. you have any other questions

any of the pillars of healthspan, please send me a message. So exercise, sleep, nutrition, mental wellbeing, preventative care. Those are the pillars. Those are the pillars that are going to help us live a long, healthy, vibrant life. So I love talking about it. So I love researching. So please subscribe to this channel, like this video, subscribe to my podcast. I'm forever grateful and look forward to the next episode. Thanks.