The Ultimate Guide To Increasing V02 Max (at any age)

[0:00]VO2 Max is like this weird thing where everyone's kind of heard of it, almost no one's done it and everyone's got an opinion on it one way or another. Those who like to say that, oh well, lifting is my cardio. When I'm in the gym and I'm like lifting weights, like my heart rate's at 160. I'm like, oh that actually means you need to do cardio. Your heart rate is at 160 and you're doing like bicep curls, like you need to go and get some more steps in because you are aerobically unfit. In the clinic that we are building, we are going to have VO2 Max. We're running that test in the future. Yeah. Yeah, we are. That's cool. We have a couple months to prepare so that we don't embarrass ourselves. You're not somebody that's just in the stands looking, you are an athlete, you are competing. You're talking about the stuff also, like you are in it. The best thing you can do for your heart is exercise and avoid things that are bad for your heart. We like data. Data is good. It allows us to make changes if necessary. VO2 Max is the gold standard measure of cardio-respiratory fitness. So if cardio-respiratory fitness is correlated with longevity, mortality, then VO2 Max is as well because it is the gold standard measure.

[1:03]All right guys, welcome back. We're here. We have Brady Homer today to talk about VO2 Max. Have you guys ever had a VO2 Max test? No. Neither of you? Kind of. I'm not 100% sure. I believe it was a VO2 Max test because I was on a treadmill and they measured everything and I had the EKG monitors on. Yeah, I just don't remember if I had a mask on or not. But VO2 Max is like this weird thing where everyone's kind of heard of it, almost no one's done it and everyone's got an opinion on it one way or another. I think that the wearables have really brought it into the the forefront because they all claim to tell you what your VO2 Max is. Today, there's a lot of questions I want answered about VO2 Max. In the clinic that we're building, we're going to have VO2 Max. So we're going to do, we're going to do a test. We're going to do a test. I we have a couple months to uh to prepare so that we don't embarrass ourselves as we uh do our video. Make sure you guys are walking on your uh on your phone. Running. Running. Yeah. I'm actually curious Calvin what uh H-bot does with VO2 Max. I'm sure there's like a lot of we're running that test in the future. Yeah, yeah, we are. That's cool. I'm the guinea. Yeah. You're the guinea. I'm the guinea pig. Hey. Cool. Well, let's get let's get Brady on the line.

[2:24]I'm very excited to have you on Brady and I'm going to introduce you first. Brady and I have a long running friendship, digital friendship that this is now our first time kind of interacting. We have a lot of uh common enemies. We won't say who they are. And we have a lot of common mutual friends. So it is a long time coming that we wanted Brady to come on this show to be part of the DTH family. The topic today is very special which is VO2 Max. So Brady is a former employee at examine.com. He's a endurance endurance runner and overall expert and genius when it comes to training, exercise and especially VO2 Max. So Brady, with no further ado, I want you to kind of introduce yourself, maybe uh and fill in the gaps of anything that I might have missed. Yeah, you pretty much you pretty much covered everything. I did graduate school and I have some, you know, research training and clinical research which I think informs a lot of how I write and talk about science right now, having, you know, actually done some of the research. Currently right now, uh what I do as a full-time job, I work for work with Dr. Rona Patrick, helping her with some of her podcast stuff, some of the research stuff there. And I also write my own substack, do some other writing on the side. So there's a lot of, I won't say misinformation, but there's just a lot of shallow information out there, I think, when it comes to health and science and um I'm enjoying being kind of knee deep in the research and telling people what's what's hot, what's working, uh, you know, what you should pay attention to. It's it's a lot of fun. Yeah, and the last bit that we need to add on top of that, and you're doing the thing too. You're not somebody that's just in the stands looking, you are an athlete, you are competing. You're talking about the stuff also, like you are in it, which I think just adds such a layer of credibility and also just like there's anecdotes that no one else that's just researching purely is going to be able to know versus you're like, yeah, man, on mile 20 when I took this gummy or whatever before. Like there's just like a level to that that's so much deeper. Yeah, and in fact, I would love to dive into your to your story a little bit. So you were a former Division I athlete, is that right? Yeah, I ran Division I cross-country track and field in uh college. Let's back up and I want to kind of dive into who is Brady Homer, right? So like you're in college, you're this athlete. Did you always have aspirations to kind of go into exercise research? I did, and to be completely honest, it's weird. Since I was in high school, I kind of knew, I knew that I wanted to do something related to the human body, whether that was biology or like athletic training for a bit. I went through a phase where I maybe wanted to do that and then, you know, more and more, I was just like, okay, exercise science seems like the right fit. So when I was going into college, I decided to major it in exercise science. I honestly had no idea that this whole world of sort of research, scientific research existed. So I was in, you know, in college, studying exercise science and then my sophomore or junior year, one of my professors basically just made this announcement in class. He said, you know, I'm I'm starting up this research project. We're going to be measuring VO2 Max and we're going to look at how energy drinks affect VO2 Max and uh oxygen consumption during exercise. And I was like, oh, well, that sounds kind of interesting. But to back up and move on to your question or you know, answer your question, I think being a runner, being interested in nutrition, if I eat better, I run better. Um and you know, how to fuel the body correctly and I knew that I needed a lot of sleep. So I was just I was really interested in all of these things because I was a runner, so I think naturally I just wanted to study these things and and learn more about them. So it was just pretty natural and um inevitable, I guess. That's really cool. How did you end up at examined? Both of my jobs that I've had out of graduate school have come from X connections that I've made over X. So examine.com, uh Kamal, one of the co-founders of examine, I had followed him. He had basically just posted something on X about, hey, we're we're hiring for research position and I sent him a DM. I said, hey, uh I'd like to apply for this.

[6:16]I applied, went through that process and then, you know, it it eventually just started working there. So it was through just a job announcement on on X that I had found that. That's pretty cool. I didn't know, I didn't know that you got your job from X. That's awesome. I got my job from X too. I met you guys from X. I met Brady from X digitally. We all got everything from X. So real quick, before we kind of dive into the, to the meat and potatoes of everything, I'm curious. You know, I'm sure you work with other researchers that don't have the exercise prowess that you do. How would you say that that actually living, as TJ said, like living the the lifestyle and being in exercise rather than just knowing about it, how has that influenced your path to what you do research on and just in general, like compared to someone who maybe doesn't exercise but still does exercise research? I think in two ways probably it steers that. So one, there's this phrase out there that, you know, research is me search. So you, you really get interested in things that you yourself either want to use or are interested in. So a lot of it is just stuff that I'm using, whether it's nutrition wise or these hacks to, you know, improve my health or improve my running performance. A lot of the things that I'm interested in, I just end up trying to research. I don't think that it's necessary to, you know, be a high-level or even an exerciser to do exercise research, but it obviously helps because you you can understand stuff a little bit better. I mean, if you're like a nutritionist, but you're, you know, overweight and just eating ultra processed foods all the time, nobody's really going to take you seriously. That does help a little bit. I'm not not to say that you need to be that to to have that credibility, but but it helps and, you know, if I'm using the stuff that I'm actually writing about and sort of providing my my anecdotes, I think that it helps people to say, oh, well, he's using this and he trusts enough that he's um willing to experiment with it. So, I might give it a shot as well. I appreciate the diplomacy. I am not so diplomatic. I think it adds so much credibility. I listen to you over anyone else. Just kidding. Just kidding. No, I think I think Huberman, Huberman has a has a tweet about this and he was like, we are past the point where like doctors can be fat and tell you to lose weight. You need to look healthy and be healthy to give health advice and to just talk in the health sphere. And I think it's true. There are probably overweight and unhealthy doctors and researchers that really know their stuff, but ultimately, like in today's day and age, like I I feel like it's kind of a prerequisite. Yeah, I mean, even this show. I already, like I'm so conscious, like we're just talking about it casually. I have no credentials, but I'm like, how do I look? Like, you know, am I pale? Like You look tiny in that chair. That chair right there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the chair is bigger than me. Yeah. Uh, before we jump into the segments, I have a self-serving question Brady. And I mean, I've been dying since we we scheduled this. I'm dying to ask you this. Since I'm seven, I played academy, highest level conditioned. I was always the worst conditioned person on my team. I used to be super lean and, you know, running 7 to 9 miles a game, practicing three, four times a week. And my question is, how much of a genetic aspect do you feel there is to some of this stuff versus like how much of it is malleable? Genetics, like they said, your baseline. So there's a genetic component. We're going to talk all about VO2 Max today and there's certainly almost 50% is kind of estimated to be genetics. It's not destiny. So your genetics set, oh, this is kind of what you're starting off with. Everything is malleable. So you can elevate your VO2 Max even if you don't start from a high level. But none of us on this call, on this podcast right now, we're going to ever be in the NBA, no matter how hard we work. We're just not meant to do it. So I started running when I was like 13, 14, and junior high school, you know, doing cross-country. I passed out during one of of these races and so they took me in to do an exercise stress test, so basically a VO2 Max test where, you know, I had the mask on. And my VO2 Max was, uh, I think it was 73 when I was 16 years old. And so, I mean, it's probably not much higher now, but I think that just goes to show like some of this stuff is just like natural. I mean, I was, you know, I was training obviously at the time, but not like an elite athlete and um just had this high VO2 Max. So it's just like, you're kind of, uh, kind of steered in a certain direction when you start off with a with a baseline like that. 100% because actually, funny enough, I submitted my genetics to Dr. Rhonda Patrick's uh organization to have. They do the they do their own analysis of your genetics and it came back that I have like powerlifting genes. I've deadlifted over 500 pounds without even really training for it, just like going to the gym and deadlifting, I was able to get there. Don't you have like the Myostatin gene or something? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I don't but again, I run around the block and I'm like, oh. So I just I just wanted to hear Brady's opinion on it and and I think that's a very fair assessment that like, yeah, I just have a really low set point. It's not your fault, TJ. It's not me. I'm a victim. Yeah, muscle, muscle fiber types, all that kind of stuff. I mean, a lot a lot of genetic component to to athleticism and stuff, but again, that doesn't mean none of it is uh, you know, trainable, I think. I mean, I'm never going to be like probably super jacked, you know, I could lift a ton of weights, but it's just like my body type, my frame isn't going to isn't going to do that, you know? Back to the advice thing, and that's why I give, that's why I give running advice on X and not like resistance training advice because, you know, I'm sure you can see it through the camera, but, you know, I got like pretty large, pretty large biceps. So I uh don't refrain from giving any resistance training advice and I just stick to the running stuff. Nice. Um, so let's let's dive right in. I want to kind of start with initiating some people who might not really know a lot about VO2 Max and like, we'll call this like the breakdown, I guess. Even people who know about VO2 Max lightly, I think they just think of it as like this test where they throw you on a treadmill, they put a mask on your head. They kind of just stress test you, right? But can you just dive into what are the inner mechanics of VO2 Max and like what it's actually measuring? The best definition I can give of it, one that I use all the time is it's your body's integrative ability to take in, deliver and utilize oxygen to produce energy during maximal exercise. Um, so that reflects again, I said integrative ability. So it is measuring the capacity of your lungs. It is measuring the capacity of your heart. It is measuring the function and the capacity of your blood vessels and your capillaries, which are your smaller blood vessels that actually kind of deliver that oxygenated blood to the muscles. It reflects the ability of your skeletal muscles to take up that oxygen and then your mitochondrial function. The mitochondria are the sort of final destination of oxygen where they take up oxygen and produce ATP. I mean, it's a reflection of whole body function. That is why I think it is probably the most potent, the most robust, important vital sign that we can measure. Can you just dive into what the physical test entails? Like the treadmill, the mask, everything. Often it's on a treadmill, but it could also be done on like a stationary bike or something like that. They will hook you up to a mask. Some of these masks will just fit over your face and some of them will be like a snorkel, like basically a snorkel mouthpiece. Those suck. Those are super uncomfortable. The the face mask is a little bit better. What that mask is doing is capturing the air that you're exhaling. So you're going to start the test. You're going to start at like a slow speed to warm up and then that that test will just get progressively harder. So the speed will get faster and then usually the grade will increase, so the ramp on the treadmill will get steeper. Speed is going to go up and you're just going to keep doing that for about ideally 10 to 15 minutes is the length of the test. You usually don't want to go too much shorter than that or too much longer than that because your legs can then start to give out, you're not really measuring, you're measuring more like fatigue versus your actual oxygen uptake. So progressively harder, it's called a test to exhaustion and you'll just continue to go faster and faster and steeper and steeper until you reach a point where you say I simply can't go anymore, you'll just hop off the treadmill. And so there are various formulas that can be used because we know the concentration of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the air that you're inhaling. That's known because it's the ambient air. And then that mask is measuring the concentration of oxygen and carbon dioxide that you're exhaling. And then use that to calculate how much oxygen your body is consuming because the difference in oxygen coming in minus the difference in oxygen going out, your body took up, you know, the unmeasured or the unmeasured portion of that. And then you can know your maximal oxygen consumption at the uh maximal the end of that test. To verify that you've actually reached a maximal test. And the main one of those is like a plateau. So if you look at a graph of someone's oxygen consumption during that test, it's just going to keep going up and up and up. Eventually, you will hit a point where the intensity of that treadmill gets higher. So say it gets steeper, you're going faster, but your oxygen just goes like this, just flat lines. So you reach a plateau and that is sort of a verification of, well, you've reached your VO2 Max. That's kind of the classic indicator. Yes, you have reached your VO2 Max. So, getting a little technical there, but that's sort of what the test involves, kind of what the output of that test might look like if somebody was looking at their their result. Well, these wearables now claim to measure VO2 Max too, right? Like the Garmin, I think the Garmin Watch claims to measure your VO2 Max. But like, it has to be so generative and predictive that like it it loses so much resolution, right? It is. I I tell people, please don't put any stock in the actual number that your Garmin, your Whoop, your Aura is giving you for your VO2 Max. The trend is generally probably going to be somewhat correct. So if it says you're going up, you're probably going up. If it says you're going down, maybe you're actually losing fitness. But but the number, I mean, it's derived from how these wearables calculate your VO2 Max is using an algorithm based on your age, your sex, your weight, and then your heart rate at a different at a certain running speed. And it's just going to, it uses an algorithm then to predict your VO2 Max based on that. So, obviously, they're not measuring oxygen consumption because it's it's on your wrist or whatever. Let's use it as as a guide, maybe, but really just don't it's not the be all end all. It's just so crazy these wearables, because really all they are is heart rate monitors, right? And like they just connect so many data points to heart rate that it's like it's ridiculous, honestly. So I want to ask one question before we move on about the test. So I've noticed in my own working out, right? If I just go and start working out, I'll tap really quick, right? Like my heart rate, my breathing will get too high. But if I warm up, I it takes me much longer to tap. So when you're doing some sort of VO2 Max test, is there like a warm up period? Because if you just take me cold, put me on, I'm going to get like a five, and then I may actually get like, I don't know what the number is, but like a 20 when I'm warmed up. So how does that work? Yeah, most often the protocol is either like a 5 to 10 minute warm up where you're just going to walk at a very slow speed. It's a progressive test. So even if you didn't warm up, you would say start at you're walking at four miles per hour. Now you're walking at five miles per hour. Now you're walking at 6, 7, 8. So you're gradually you're you're ramping up gradually, but you will generally get a 5 to 10 minute warm up if the if the uh technician is running the test right. They'll they'll give you a warm up. That's why the test is supposed to be gradual. It's progressive, working you up over 15 minutes to that maximal kind of intensity. Yeah. So ideally, yeah, there should be a warm up built in there as well. So it's funny, like the the first exposure I ever had to VO2 Max was in like the early days of LeBron James, like basketball career. Because I feel like he was always this like very in the spotlight, kind of NBA player. He spends a million dollars on his. He was like, you know, he was kind of like the Brian Johnson before Brian Johnson where like they were throwing so much money at testing him in the I could close my eyes and picture him in the ice bath and like with the VO2 Max on the treadmill. And I remember I saw him on the treadmill with this like space looking mask like that the fighter pilots wear. And I was like in college or something or like high school even. And I was like, what is that? And I found out that the VO2 Max test, what that was. And I feel like for a very long time and up until very recently, that was not a test you could really get that easily. And now it's kind of becoming a little bit more democratized, you know, same thing with Dexa scans are a lot more easier to get. So there's just a lot more diagnostic like access for people. If you're like someone who's listening and they just are finding out what VO2 Max is. Where are you telling them to go to get this test done? I don't think everybody needs to go get a VO2 Max test, but I think everybody should if they can. I mean, everybody these days is interested in getting, you know, a full panel like blood test. I really think a VO2 Max test is 10X more informative than a single blood test that you're going to get yearly. Where would I recommend it? I mean, as you mentioned, it's it's getting very democratized these days. If you are in most cities have a a university. A lot of these universities, their exercise physiology, exercise science departments. Longevity clinics maybe, but a lot of physical therapy clinics also offer it. So we have this place in Austin, Texas called Run Lab. It's a running physical therapy clinic, but they also offer metabolic testing. So you could go there. Um so really, if you're in like a somewhat major city that has a university or, you know, a health care infrastructure, you can most likely go get one of these tests. And it's going to be $150, probably. You probably shouldn't pay more than that, but that's, I mean, $150 you can get one of these tests done. That's great. And it's funny you say that because whenever patients ask me where they can get a sleep study, my answer is always call your nearest university. So I I think any kind of uh cool testing like that, just when in doubt, call, call a uh a somewhat reasonable university and you can get anything done. That's kind of cool actually. It's a it's like a little hack. Uh Brady, if it's cool with you, we'll hop into one of the segments. Uh, you know, we like to to segment things out. Uh, this one is BS or not.

[19:41]10,000 steps a day is all you need for your heart health. Oh man. That one's that one's BS, you know, I won't go into the whole origin story of the 10,000 steps, but kind of this, uh, this arbitrary number. And as we know from the exercise science literature now, all steps are not created equal, you know, 10,000 vigorous steps is not 10,000 steps hovering around your house, uh, doing the laundry or doing the dishes. So, uh, it's it's certainly BS. Is it a good target? Yes, of course. But I would say, why limit yourself to 10,000? I think you should probably walk as much as possible during the day. So, 10,000 is BS, but, you know, accumulate as many steps as you can. There's, uh, you know, health benefits and I don't really think that there's an upper limit to the health benefits of just walking more. If you were to say like, someone's extremely busy, like what's the minimal that they should be getting? 7,000. 7,000 a day is bare minimum is what you should be getting. Well, I suck. Is that yesterday? No, no, no, the last six months, I'm out 4600. Oh, God. He also doesn't go outside. I sit at my desk and work. You're building a toothpaste empire. Can I bring it down to 5, between 5 and 7,000? No, no, we want to go out, we want to go outside. We want to go outside. Uh, number two. Zone 2 is more important than hit. More important, BS. Um, they are probably equally beneficial depending on what you are looking for for an outcome, but uh, no, certainly not more beneficial. Number three. VO2 Max is the best predictor of whether you'll live or die. Not BS for that one. You know, I think there's so much evidence at this point that, you know, as I mentioned before, like there's not really a single other biomarker that is as integrative as VO2 Max. I mean, cholesterol, blood glucose. I really, I really think that VO2 Max is sort of the the premier biomarker that we're measuring if it's uh, if we're considering your, you know, chances of of dying or getting a disease or being healthy. So, not BS at all. Cardio kills your gains. That one is BS. Plenty of studies now showing that if you can do cardio, you can do cardio and lifting at the same time and gain muscle. Obviously, the caveat there being, you know, you have to either be in an energy balance or, uh, energy surplus, you know, if you are doing so much cardio that it is reducing your ability to adequately perform resistance training or if you're trying to grow muscle and you're in a caloric deficit, that's really just not going to happen. So, you don't want the catabolic process of cardiovascular exercise to overwhelm the anabolic process of trying to, you know, gain resistance training, but there are certainly compatible if you if you fuel right and train smart. Does the order matter, cardio or resistance training first? I see people quibble about that all the time. No, it doesn't matter. It just really depends what you're trying to to optimize. So if you're a lifter and you know the lifting is the main thing during the day, you're trying to get stronger, then you should probably lift and then do your cardio. But if you're a endurance athlete, you're going to probably want to do your endurance session before your lift. Now, there's a big difference between a say an endurance athlete then and just somebody doing what quote unquote again cardio. So if you're doing 30 minutes easy on the elliptical, it probably doesn't matter. You can do that before your lifting session just as like a warm up. I know a lot of strength training, people who strength train do that. You need to track HRV daily. That is uh definitely BS because first of all, you know, most of the wearables that we have are not measuring HRV in a rigorous manner. Uh, so it's kind of, I won't say it's a random number generator, but it's somewhere in between a random number generator and giving you accurate information. So, uh, no, I don't yeah. I'll I'll just say that one's uh BS. Makes sense. So really just like to to wrap up this segment here of like someone who's watching, maybe they're semi-fit, maybe still kind of skinny fat or something like that. They don't really have the endurance training and they're approaching like their kind of later thirties. If you had to prescribe kind of a protocol on improving their VO2 Max, what what would you kind of frame it as? Minimum effective dose, going back to that. Three sessions per week of aerobic exercise training. So one of those sessions is going to be an interval training session. That could be two to about four minutes long of the interval duration. That seems to be best for improving VO2 Max because you can exercise at a high intensity without accumulating too much fatigue. Session number two, 45 to 60 minute easy endurance session. Get on the bike, get on the treadmill, go for a very brisk walk. Something where your heart rate is elevated. That's like a four out of five in terms of your perceived exertion or your effort level. Third session per week, that's going to be a let's call it a quote unquote ultra endurance session, 90 minutes to two hours long. Now that doesn't have to be a bike ride. Maybe that can be a mountain bike ride. Maybe that can be a hike. Maybe that can be, oh heck, I don't know. You're playing basketball at the gym for two hours. Something that is longer during the week. That's your ultra endurance session. That is a sustainable cardiovascular protocol that's going to not only like improve your fitness, but just keep your heart health kind of where it needs to be. Totally. And I think that like when we think of like VO2 Max improvement, we think of like that LeBron James image where like he's on the treadmill and it's like you're in like a like a lab rat basically, right? But the way you're describing, like what we call a minimum effective dose, this is like just lifestyle training that's like slightly modified. So like it's not, it doesn't feel much different than going to the gym. And I think it's really important that people see that is that like you can, you know, this VO2 Max concept can feel intimidating, very clinical and very like, you know, robotic laboratory kind of stuff. But when you describe it as like it can be hiking or it can be swimming or it can be cycling, people just kind of start to realize it's much more approachable. Or in our fours with your kids. And there are some people who want to take a little bit more of a clinical or lab approach and I think that's fine. Like if you were to ask me, oh, somebody wants to, they're like, hey, in six months I want to increase my VO2 Max by 10 to 15 points or whatever. Then I would be like, okay, well, you're going to do two or three high intensity interval sessions per week. So we're not going to do a lot of this long-term endurance training, but that would be like a like a research study basically on someone. But yeah, you can take that clinical approach too if you wanted to. Some people like that, um but, you know, so there can be there can be multiple routes to to improving this metric. Yeah, and I'm sorry. I made fun of Hyrox yesterday on Twitter. I'm sorry. It was just a joke. Just a joke. I didn't mean it. So Brady, I want the last segment I want to kind of do is like this collision point. I've seen you on the timeline kind of bark at people and they bark back about whether VO2 Max is this like vanity metric, right? If it's like this overused, over prescribed, they almost kind of liken it to like how grip strength and testosterone have been like correlated and like there's this vast chasm of factors in between VO2 Max and actual longevity and they just happen to be kind of lightly correlated or something like that. Can you just speak to kind of the origin of this controversy and and maybe also speak to kind of your your perspective in stance? A lot of the studies that have associated VO2 Max with all cause mortality, don't actually measure VO2 Max per se. So they are maybe having participants do a submaximal test and then they are estimating VO2 Max from that. Or they're doing a maximal test, but they're not actually measuring oxygen consumption. So they're estimating metabolic equivalence of tasks, which is basically a unit of energy expenditure and then using that to create or uh estimated VO2 Max from that. So you have a lot of this data on VO2 Max and mortality that use the cardio respiratory fitness is the correct term. Because if you're not actually measuring oxygen, then it's just cardio respiratory fitness. That's sort of the source of this controversy. And there are a couple people in social media who have sort of written articles or done like a video or something on YouTube where they debunk it and say, oh, they didn't even measure VO2 Max. Therefore, VO2 Max is just a vanity metric. We don't need to be measuring it. Not everybody needs a VO2 Max test. All that really matters is performance. Does it doesn't really matter what your VO2 Max is? Can you run a fast mile? Can you chase your kids around the yard? That's all. You just need to do the thing that you want to do. You don't actually need the VO2 Max to tell you you can do the thing. I partly agree with that. But we don't have the research data showing that however fast you can run a mile or your ability to chase your kids around is correlated with mortality. What we do have is that this number of VO2 Max or cardio respiratory fitness is associated with mortality. VO2 Max is the gold standard measure of cardiorespiratory fitness.

[28:17]I don't really get what the pushback is. I think that it's just these guys trying to like dunk on something. I think they've run out of things to debunk and dunk on. And it's weird that they're targeting aerobic fitness. I think a lot of it, you know, there was this whole controversy with Peter Attia a couple months ago. I think that they're throwing the baby out with the bathwater because VO2 Max has been so associated with Peter Attia. He kind of put it on the map and cited all of these studies and so they're like, oh my gosh, we're canceling this guy. So we're going to cancel VO2 Max along with it. But he's right. He's so right. VO2 Max was on Epstein's Island. He mentioned it in the email 17,000 times. For some reason, people want cardio and VO2 Max to not be important. And they let that guide their I wish that was true. I just know it's not. Yeah, and it's like, you know, we have this like bias to to like try to retrofit reality into our secret desires and our latent wishes. And like I think that that is like VO2 Max is just gets so wrongly defamed because we all want someone to tell us you don't have to run. And you don't have to exert yourself and you could just lift a couple times a week and like be healthy. Yeah, and I just want to clarify when I say it sucks, it's if you are not in it, if you do not have cardiovascular health and you try to get it, it is painful. That's why. I used to love running. I'd run five miles twice a day and then like now I'm like, oh, maybe I'll just do some zone too. You just wanted to say he ran 10 miles. He just wanted to say he ran 10 miles. Well Brady, I'm sure it's like it's kind of like flossing, right? Where it's like if and I I'm sorry to do this to you because like it's like I know I'm a dentist, what do you want from me? But it's like if if flossing sucks and it you're bleeding from it, that means you have to do it more, right? And so like I'm sure, I'm sure cardio is the same thing, right? Like if if people come to you and they tell you that like cardio sucks and it's miserable, your answer is probably like, well, you need to do it until it's not miserable. You know, there there are those who like to say that, oh, well, well, lifting is my cardio. You know, I'm when I'm in the gym and I'm like lifting weights, like my heart rate's at 160. I'm like, oh that actually means you need to do cardio because you're heart rate is at 160 and you're doing like bicep curls, like you need to go and get some more steps in because you are aerobically unfit. Uh now, I don't think your heart rate should not spike during, you know, weightlifting if you're if you're doing it right or you're doing circuits or something, but yeah, lifting is is not cardio. And if it if it is, then that means you should probably uh improve your fitness a little bit more. That's that's my take there. Great point. Great point. Totally. All right, Brady. Well, um, we're coming up towards the end here. So if you could let the kind people know where they could find you. We're going to plug some links to your substack and your X account. But just uh any parting words that you have for anyone who who might be watching today. I mentioned this earlier, but, you know, I'm I'm sort of I'm very adamant about VO2 Max. I think it's a great metric. Do I think that everybody needs to go get a VO2 Max test? No. I mean, you can improve your fitness. You can improve your health without going and getting a test and paying for this. But I think that knowing stuff, especially for people probably watching this show, I mean, you like to measure stuff. We like data. Data is good. And it it allows us to make changes if necessary. So, I think it's a number that most people should know and it can be important for their health. Um so that will be kind of my my uh soapbox on on VO2 Max. But if people want to read more, I have a substack. It's called Physiologically Speaking. I write a lot about aerobic fitness, but that's just one of the things I write about. Uh anything that really suits my fancy in terms of health, longevity, performance, nutrition, I write about in my weekly newsletter and and do some other content as well. I also have a book. So VO2 Max Essentials uh and it's available on Amazon as a ebook. It also has a hard cover and a paperback. So if people want to learn more about the science of VO2 Max, sort of what it means, how to improve it and, you know, how it changes with aging, a lot of things uh included in there. They can go purchase that book. I think it's maybe $10, $10, $15 on Amazon. So I would encourage people to pick that up and uh if you do, let me know what you think. I'd love to uh hear it. Awesome. Thank you so much, Brady.