VO₂ Max: The Longevity Metric You’re Not Thinking About (But Should Be)

If you’ve ever thought VO₂ max was just for elite athletes or lab testing… think again.

In this episode, Aaron Shaw breaks down why VO₂ max is one of the most powerful—and overlooked—predictors of how long and how well you’ll live. Whether you’re a former athlete who’s fallen out of routine or just someone who wants more energy and resilience, this one’s for you.

👉 You’ll learn:

• What VO₂ max really is (in simple terms)

• Why it’s a key indicator of healthspan and not just fitness

• How even small improvements can cut your risk of death by 50–70% (seriously)

• How Aaron’s maintained a top-7% VO₂ max at age 50+ with minimal structured training

• Two simple ways to improve your VO₂ max—no sprints, no fancy lab tests required

• How to use wearables like WHOOP, Garmin, or Apple Watch to track your progress

Aaron also shares his own transformation—from structured road bike racer to a busy professional maintaining high-level VO₂ with just a few smart weekly workouts.

🎯 One challenge for listeners:

Pick one day in the next 7 days to train your VO₂ max—and take control of your future health.

🧠 Backed by insights from Dr. Peter Attia, Dr. Andrew Huberman, and the latest research, this episode gives you the tools and motivation to take action—starting now.

📲 Follow + share this episode with a friend who needs a nudge to start training again.

💪 You don’t have to be an athlete to build an engine that lasts a lifetime.

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Transcript

First and foremost, huge shout out to you because you pressed play on an episode that had VO2 Max in the title. You're gonna get a lot out of this, I promise.

Hey everyone, my name is Aaron Shaw and welcome back to HealthSpan Digest. This is a show where we break down science-backed strategies to help you live longer, feel stronger, and really show up as your best self. And today we're gonna talk about something that might sound a little technical at first, but I promise it's gonna be one of the most powerful and impactful things you can do for your long-term health, your energy, your independence, and your healthspan. Your healthspan is at length of time within our lifespan that we are healthy, active,

vibrant and ideally free from disease and disability.

The topic at hand is called VO2 Max, the volume of oxygen, VO2. And no, you don't need to be a marathon runner or a bike racer or triathlete to really care about it. In fact, this episode is especially valuable for those who used to be athletic. think maybe back when you were a teenager, when you were a kid and you were running around, maybe even in your early 20s or college years where playing basketball or running or cycling or doing things where you really

found yourself out of breath on occasion, but maybe you've fallen out of that routine as you've gotten older. It's easy to do, start raising families, start working full time. But if you want to get that sensation back, that physical capacity back, that physical confidence back again, this episode's for you. And I'm going to break it down to make it really simple and straightforward. So in this episode, we're going to talk about what is VO2 max, why it matters to the average you, again, not the...

competitive athlete person, but just the average person. We're going to talk about a simple way to find your VO two max number to find out what your real number is. And then a simple way to improve it. All right. So let's get started. But let me take you back for a second. Once upon a time, I was a road cyclist, a roadie, as we would say a bike racer. And for about a dozen years, I raced full-time, basically means that I was racing for half of the year, two thirds of the year, and then training to race the other third of the year. And I loved it. Absolutely loved it. Love the competition, really enjoyed the structure and really seeing what, what my true potential was, what my capacity was. And I trained specifically to improve my VO2 max. And I did all the classic workouts. I was doing, you know, four minute intervals, doing hill repeats, threshold rides, long bike rides.

And I always knew exactly what wattage I was looking for. What I was looking to hold for my power and how much time I had left on the clock. So it was always super dialed into that. These days I don't train like that. That's not what I do. Uh, life is different. I'm not racing. I dab a little bit of mountain bike racing, but it's definitely more a hobby than a really full-time kind of addicted passion, if you will. But thanks to consistent effort and really being smart with my training with a limited time that I have.

really understanding what matters most, I've maintained a really strong VO2 max. And I can promise you that it's not from any sort of physiological gift I had or genetics or anything. But right now, my whoop device, my wearable device, which estimates my VO2 max, it currently estimates mine at 48. So what does that mean? So 48, it's broken down. They call it 48 milliliters per kilogram per minute. So again, it's this volume of oxygen, which puts me in the top 7 % for my age and sex. And right now I'm in my early 50s. so I've since doing testing over the past several years, I always kind of end up being top five to top 7%. But I'll say this, not so much as a brag, but just to emphasize that my training specifically to really try to maximize my VO2.

is nothing like it used to be. It's certainly not super structured and I'm not pushing myself as hard as I used to by any stretch of the imagination. So I'm going to talk to you about how you can maximize your VO2 max and do it without feeling like you need to live like an elite athlete. But why is it so important? Well, we're going to cover that. But let's start off with getting it a little bit into the definition here. So what is VO2 max? In simple terms, It is the amount of oxygen that your body can use during intense exercise or during anything. And if you can think of your, think of it like it's the size of your engine, the bigger and more efficient it is, the more work you can do before feeling fatigued. think an analogy that you can see this on or think about this would be if you were doing a group ride, or even if you were doing a long hike, say you have a group of friends, you go out doing a big hike and.

If there's a group of you, inevitably there's somebody up at the front setting the pace, seem to make it look effortless, but they're plugging along and plugging along and then never seem to get tired. And then there's somebody in the back who is suffering, huffing and puffing, trying to keep up. That is a great representation of levels of VO2 max. The person in the front probably has a higher VO2 max, a bigger engine, if you will.

They can do more over time and do it without feeling so fatigued. And then you have somebody who's kind of trailing off the back on this hike or on this, know, everybody's doing the same thing, but somebody's falling off the back because they have a smaller engine. So it's a little four cylinder engine and a turbocharged engine. That is the difference between perhaps having low VO2 max and a high VO2 max.

But here's the real kicker. It's not just about fitness. VO2Max is one of the strongest predictors of how long you'll live. So hiking aside, bike racing aside, comparing numbers with your friends aside, all that stuff aside, VO2Max is one of the strongest predictors of how long and how well you will live. It is very, very important. So Dr. Peter Attia.

Talks about this all the time. I'll give you some numbers here just for perspective.

Dr. Peter Attia will emphasize that improving your VO2 max, again, can significantly reduce your risk of death. How much so? Is it really worth investing in? Yeah, so check this out. You'll have a 50 % reduction in your risk of death if you go from a low VO2 max to even just a below average. So even if you're really deconditioned, Maybe you've gone through a long period of your life where you haven't really even broke a sweat or really haven't pushed yourself hard physically. So if you're starting at the very bottom of VO2 max, this is like having a really small cardiovascular engine, if you will, to take that really low level and bump it up to not even average, still just like a little bit, but near average. So if you go from low to a near average VO2 max, you will reduce your risk of death by 50%.

Pretty massive. If you take and you go from a low level to an above average, let's say you really say, you know what, I'm going to invest in my VO2 max. I'm going to put in some effort. I'm going to take the next several months and kind of adjust my lifestyle. So I kind of attend to this. If you go from low VO2 max to above average, you have a 70 % reduction in your risk of death. I mean,

Kind like a mic draw. dropped this mic if it wasn't breakable, breakable. is massive. So VO two max is tied to your heart, your lungs, your metabolism, your brain health, Dr. Andrew Huberman, another person that I listened to quite a bit. He connects it directly to cognitive performance, mood regulation, and even just your overall resilience to stress. I mean, we're all stressed. We're all got way too much on our plate and having more resilience to this to stress the day to day stressors of work and family and life and being in a busy clinic or whatever your job is, you have more resilience when you have a higher VO2 max. So it's not just a fitness metric, it's a healthspan metric.

But why does this VO2 matter? Like, why does this really matter to the average you? You know, sounds great, but I'm not racing bikes anymore. I'm not running. not, you I got a full-time job. Maybe you have kids, you got an old knee injury. You have all these things going on. just the idea of VO2 max training sounds intense. Well, here's the truth. This is especially if this is kind of where your head's at. VO2 max is not about crushing sprints or absolutely punishing workouts. It is about when you think about it, like building capacity. It's our ability to move through life without gasping for air or crashing after a busy day. And we've all had busy days. We all know that feeling when you come home from work and the couch just sucks you in. think, man, I just don't have the capacity. I don't have the energy. Absolutely wiped out. If you don't like that feeling, work on your VO2 max.

It makes a difference in literally the day to day activity. So it's about being able to take the stairs without even thinking about it, carrying your luggage upstairs at the airport. Don't even think about it. Hiking without being the slowest one on the trail, recovering quickly from injury and illness, staying independent into your seventies and eighties and beyond. this is where, mean, I wish there's so many people in my life that I wish had attended to this earlier in life. But if you want to be healthy and vibrant for your kids and your grandkids, you want to have a high VO2 max. It is the insurance you need to be resilient and around and available to engage in life when you're in your 70s, 80s and beyond. And the good news is that no matter where you're starting from, you can improve your VO2 max in just six to eight weeks. Six to eight weeks will start to move the needle.

Let's talk about first, how do you measure it? How do you know what your VO2 max is? And there are a couple of options and I'm just going to hit two of them. one would be the gold standard and that would be going to a lab and getting formally tested for your VO2 max. And this is typically, it's going to be putting a mask on your face, having you on a treadmill or a bike. And there's a certain protocols that'll have you exercise gradually a little bit more intensity over the course of 10 or 15 minutes. And of course, as you're doing this, you're starting to huff and puff and things get a little bit harder, a little bit harder to the point where you just, you're pushing and you realize I can't push anymore. You've, you know, you're out of breath that in there, you know, you've got this mask on your face and it is collecting the gas exchange from this test and it will give you a number. And this number, again, it's the benefit of this is that it's repeatable. It's a repeatable test. So you can go back in.

You know, you can go in and get tested today. You can go back in and get tested in three months after doing an exercise or, um, structured exercise program and see the effect, kind of see the results, the, the whole equation, like how, how you are changing your physiology, but that's not realistic for most people. Most people aren't that interested in doing it. And it sounds kind of daunting and it sounds intimidating. And I wish it wasn't so intimidating. Um, I've, I did one last year probably about eight months ago, dealing probably about a year before that. And it's certainly there is this little, cause it's hard. It's a hard couple of minutes of effort. There was a little bit of dread, a little bit being uncomfortable, putting a mask on your face and having somebody kind of, you know, make it harder and harder to peddle. But it's over in just a couple of minutes and the data is awesome. Awesome. There's another way to do this. And this is through technology.

in the technology of wearable devices. I've got my, for watching this on YouTube, got my wearable device on right now as I always do. It's a whoop. But Apple watches and Garmin has some wearables and smartwatches in the whoop. now have, this is amazing that they can do this, but they can now give really solid estimates on your VO2 max from wearing it throughout the day, throughout the evening throughout your exercise routine, your activity, it'll start to give you over time, as it's kind of gets to gradually collect more data for you, you're gonna start to get an estimate of what your VO2max is. Now, is this VO2max estimate from my wearable device gonna be the exact same as going into a laboratory with an exercise physiologist and putting a mask on and going through our structured protocol? Well, probably not. But is it probably pretty close? And if nothing else, could you actually see at least the trend of the same, you know, if you're measuring the same measuring with the same device over and over again, you can at least start to see the trend lines of what you're doing and how that number is changing over the time. You know, if it reads it's a 48, is it actually a 48? I don't know. Is it a 45? Is it a 50? Is it a 42? I don't know. But if I just keep my eye on this particular wearable device over time and it moves with depending upon what my training is, it's information.

It's data. So the key isn't to chase a perfect number per se. The point is to track progress and really make VO2, your VO2 max part of your health dashboard, just like steps and sleep and cholesterol and blood pressure. It should be right up there in the mix with that. When you are being assessed by a coach or your primary care physician, when they're saying like, Hey, let's, let's get all the data. Let's get your blood work.

Let me see how well your sleeping is. Let me see your VO2 max. Let me see your body mass index. Let me see your weight and your height. It should be mixed right in there with all that stuff. And it's great because now we have, again, through the amazing technology, we have all this stuff, again, either rings or watches or some sort of wearable devices. So we can all have access to this. But the question is, how do we improve it? Let's say...

You're going to listen to this episode. this would, I mean, if you actually do this, please message me. Cause this would make me feel super stoked that people are falling through with this. If you listen to this episode and say, you know what? Dang it. I'm going to go for it. I want to see you in my VO two max is today. Maybe I'm going to get a wearable device or I'm going to go get formally tested, but I want to start training myself. I want to start doing something to improve this because I want to live longer. want to, I want to have a 50 % lower risk of death. So That's great. If you want to do that, let me tell you how to do that.

Couple of things. First of all, you do not need to train every day to move the needle on this. And so to think back to when I was racing full time, I was on a bike almost every day of the week. And that is certainly to get to an elite level status, but you do not have to do that. Two things you can do. step one is zone two training. That means an endurance level of training, low intensity, steady state, where you can hold, you can hold a little bit of a conversation when you're doing that, but think of it as a really brisk walk. And we'll say even like a brisk walk up a little bit of an incline. So not so much that you're running, but you're breathing pretty heavily. So that would be about a zone two level of, we're talking about like heart rate zones here.

And so you can do that with, know, the brisk walk, ideally a brisk walk, going up kind of like an inclined grade. You could maybe do it with slow jogging. If you're pretty well trained, the tough thing with jogging or any sort of running is that unless you've been doing it for a long period of time, typically it's hard to keep your heart rate down that low. But a really good way to do it is on a bike. And again, I'm not here to pitch cycling, although you should cause it's great. It's my sport of choice but cycling is a great way to do it, especially if you're to do something on an indoor trainer and that could be their indoor bike trainer or an indoor, or treadmill. can really kind of finesse the incline and finesse the resistance. But the key here is two days a week, maybe three days a week, take 45 minutes, maybe an hour. If you can have the willpower to do that and get your heart rate up to zone two. And I have other episodes where I've talked about zone two training. So if you want to do a deep dive into that, I've talked about that.

And do that a couple of days a week. This will help build your mitochondria. These little, energy powerhouses in our cell, if you will, it will improve fat metabolism, which is great. So now your body's taking stored fat and using it as energy, which is awesome. And ultimately it makes everything else feel easier. So do a bunch of zone two. And then this is where it gets a little bit real. You need to do VO two max intervals, but especially if you're kind of just new doing it one day a week, that's fine. Just do it one day a week to get started. And this is where you're going to push harder efforts, but a short period of time. And there's a whole bunch of different sequences that you can do or interval timing variables that you could do. I think that the best one to remember, the easiest one for me to think about is doing four minutes at a challenging pace followed by a rest for three to four minutes. What is a challenging pace? Well, a challenging pace

First of all, it's meant to be a consistent pace. And if you've never done VO2 max training before, and again, this could be running or on a bike or an erg, some sort of, cardiovascular activity. If you've never done this before, cut yourself some slack is probably going to take two, three or four sessions before you really sort of figure out how much intensity to push, during this interval session, the error that some people make is if you were going to do a four minute interval, people tend to start pushing too hard to start with. So the goal would be to have a steady state of effort throughout that entire four minutes. And that means that when you first start off the first minute, sometimes the first minute and a half, almost two minutes, it's certainly not zero effort, but you're plugging along thinking, shoot, I don't think I've gone out quite hard enough. And then by the third minute, you're feeling, this is pretty hard. Okay. Now you're breathing heavy. Your heart rate's pumping. You feel like, this is pretty hard. Starting to get pretty uncomfortable. And then that fourth minute, it's really hard. That's a really hard, that fourth minute. There's no joke. It's no joke. It's just really, really hard because that, by the time you finish that fourth minute, you should be gassed, pooped out, tired, hang your head, breathing like crazy, heart rate is through the roof. And then you take four minutes and recover, at least three minutes, if not four minutes and recover. So it's a four minute effort, four minute recovery. Now what you've done during that four minutes of effort is your body has really been trying to intake as much oxygen as possible to fuel your muscles. To fuel your muscles because you're jogging up a hill or you're.

you know, going up a hill on a bike, you're just finding you've got a nice flat straight road and you're just going really hard. And so you're, as you're doing more and more work, your body's like, Hey, we need more oxygen. The volume of oxygen is increasing your body saying, Hey, I need more oxygen. need more fuel to get my muscles to do work. And again, after that fourth minute, that last minute of the four minute interval,

It kind of feels like two minutes sometimes. And so it does take practice to pace yourself to not go out too hard to begin with. And then to kind of fade out because you thought, Oh, this isn't hard enough. It's supposed to be hard. Practice it a couple of times. The idea of doing this four minutes on four minutes off. And really if you can kind of cycle through that three times to start with. So it's four minutes on four minutes off and you do that three times in a row. So total of 12 minutes of effort. That's your workout. You're done. That's your VO2 max workout of the day. Make a mental note. How did that feel? How steady were you with your effort? And again, it can be on a bike. It can be on an erg where you're doing rowing, or it can be outside on a local trail and you've just got four minutes of trail ahead of you that you can really kind of get after it. Then do it. So it does not take a lot of time. And I think the barrier that most people have Is that it is challenging. think people are a little, the little maybe misinformed or a little overly intimidated to start with. Cause they think that it is a sprint for a moment one and you're supposed to be sprinting that this crazy high intensity for a long period of time. That is not the way it works. It is steady hard So the four minutes on the four minutes off out of, there's a bunch of different ways. And if you have ways that you prefer to do it, drop me a comment. I will.

curious what people actually do. You could do shorter intervals. There's a whole bunch of, you know, different sequences to do, but the key here with this is that you don't need to go out, don't need to go all out effort a hundred percent of the time for every second. And you don't need to do this, you know, four or five days a week. Literally, if you do this at, you know, once a week is awesome. If you do it twice a week, that's ambitious. definitely do not need to do it more than twice a week.

But if you can do it consistently, and let's say you do it once a week, if you're not doing it now, if you do this once a week for eight weeks, you can have a five, up to a 20, sometimes 25 % increase in VO2 max in just a couple of months, which is profound. Now, if you are a trained athlete right now and you've been training, like, you you've been doing interval training and cardiovascular training for...

you know, days, weeks, and months, then the change is going to be smaller, but still not insignificant. The key here is doing it consistently, trying to find a way to get it into your schedule once a week, pick a day of the week and say, Hey, for, you know, 12 minutes or 16 minutes of effort, I'm going to improve my VO2 max and decrease my risk of death. That is motivation for you. You will live a longer more vibrant life, you'll have more capacity, you'll have a bigger engine, you'll be able to recover better from injuries and illnesses because you have a greater VO2 max. It is, again, it's a key indicator for your quality of life.

Let's bring it back to you here. Let's talk about If you've been athletic before and you've fallen off the wagon over the past years or decades, think of it as you have, let's call it muscle memory. I'm not really a big fan of that phrase or wording, but let's just call it muscle memory. you have like this, think about it as having a fitness account or fitness bank account, if you will. And you've made some investments in the past and lately you haven't.

Maybe you've, as life's gone on, you maybe you've made some theoretical withdrawals, withdrawals from this because you're not doing any more to nurture this fitness bank account. It's time to reinvest in this account. So you're going to pick two days a week, three, if you're one extra credit, and you're going to do 45 minutes of steady state zone to cardiovascular training. And you can do one day a week of interval training.

You're going to start with four minutes of effort and four minutes of rest. That effort should be seven on a 10 scale to start with. So when you first start, I'm going to use riding as the example, because that's what I've done the most of. When you first start this format interval and I've got this, I've got this spot near where I live right now. And it's perfect because it starts off flat and then it turns, goes up this little Little grade of a hill and it's like a perfect four minute effort for me. start off pedaling and the first minute you're just kind of plugging along. You get up to speed, feeling pretty good. You feel it a little bit. course, heart rate starts to pump a little bit. Not a big deal. Two minutes in feel pretty good. Like, this is, you know, I feel strong. The third minute of these four minutes of this form and effort really kind of when you start to feel. I should feel a little bit uncomfortable. You know, your heart rates up, but you're kind of getting in the zone.

you know, again, you don't want to say panting, but your, your respiration respiratory rate is up. And it's not until that last minute where it really kind of gets uncomfortable. So that last fourth minute is really where you're doing big investments into your fitness bank. But this is where I say, this is where the money's at. This is where the real gains come from. And I wish that there was a way that I could say it's super easy. It takes no effort and you get all the benefits and none of the

You know, of the challenges, it's not the way it is. So this is definitely, I want you to think of that, you know, third and fourth minute of these intervals as picking your, picking your discomfort. So you can either be uncomfortable because you're unhealthy or you can be uncomfortable because you're investing in your fitness account. So you can be healthy.

So in summary, let's think about VO2 max as another essential stat that is important to your health. It's as important as your cholesterol, as your blood pressure, as your height and weight and VO2 max. It's got to be in that equation. It's got to be on your health dashboard, if you will. think about it, when you see your physician, if you have a coach and you're working with somebody like this has to be part of the equation to really make sure you're getting all, hitting all aspects of your lifespan and your healthspan.

So the one thing you can do, as I talk about in every episode, there's one thing you can do today to extend your healthspan. It is to create a VO2 max plan today. Take pause for a second, look at your calendar, pick a day, this the day in the next seven days where you're going to, again, choose your sport, choose your cardiovascular sport. And again, I'll use cycling as my example, because that's what I do.

One day over the next seven days, I'm going to put a day on the calendar and say, that's going to be my VO2 max investment day. And with that, I'm going to think about where I'm to go. And I'm going to think I'm going to do four, a four minute effort, hard effort, followed by four minutes of rest. And I'm going do that three times in a row. And then I'm going home. That is, that is a win. The one thing you need to do is put it on the calendar. You can understand.

And again, I'm barely even scratching the concept of the true exercise physiology, the depth of what the value of VO2 max is, but rest assured it is incredibly high value. So knowing that it's good for you, the science is indisputable. It is super good for you. A higher VO2 max is better. Absolutely. It's a little bit uncomfortable, but improving your VO2 max is a clear path to doing it. The next step is to actually do it. I know that it gets hard with this. all, again, my life as a coach, it's much less about teaching my clients how to eat better or how to exercise more or how to move more. It's really more about how to integrate this into a system in their life. should, you you can assess your own fitness and think, yeah, I should probably lift weights more. Yeah, I should probably do more cardiovascular training. Yeah, I should probably eat more vegetables.

We know these things actually implementing it is the hard part, but that starts by having a plan. So the one thing you're going to do today, we're going to stop. You're going to stop this podcast and you're going to look at your calendar and say, what day in the next seven days am I going to do an honest investment into my VO two max fitness account? Because I want to live, live a long, healthy life. If you have any questions about VO two max, can do deep dives into little nuance parts of it. If there's something specific about a training plan that you have that you want me to kind of look over, I'm happy to do that. Shoot me an email, shoot me a text, shoot me a message related through the podcast platforms or through YouTube, if you're watching this on YouTube, and I respond to everybody. Thank you for listening. Please like, subscribe, follow, do all that cool stuff. Most importantly, more important than any of sort of nonsense is get out and do VO2 max training.

Put it in your repertoire. It is worth it. You are worth it. So get out there and get after it. Cheers.