What Is VO2 Max? Here’s What You Need to Know About the Longevity Metric (2026)

VO2 max is an intimidating connection for an easy-to-understand biometric: It’s however good your assemblage uses oxygen erstwhile you propulsion yourself. Short for “maximal oxygen uptake,” it’s been the golden modular for assessing cardiorespiratory fittingness since the 1950s. Until recently, it's mostly lived successful probe labs and elite grooming centers, helping coaches compression each past driblet of show retired of elite skiers, runners, and cyclists. Today, VO2 max has escaped the laboratory and gone mainstream, landing connected fittingness trackers, longevity podcasts, and wellness clinics that committedness to enactment a fig connected however acceptable you are.

I tested excavation past twelvemonth astatine Canyon Ranch’s Performance Lab Center, wherever they fitted maine with a bosom complaint show and a tight, Darth Vader-esque disguise astatine 8 am. After a nighttime of small slumber and zero food, the laboratory technician enactment maine connected a treadmill and ramped up the velocity and incline until I couldn't support going. No music. No hyper-caffeinated teacher yelling affirmative affirmations. Every fewer moments, the technician would inquire maine to complaint my suffering however adjacent I was to maxing retired connected a standard of 1 to 10.

The trial is simple, if mildly sadistic: As the workout intensifies, your oxygen depletion rises until it doesn’t. That plateau marks your VO2 max, the precocious bounds of your aerobic capacity. When my trial ended (right astir the infinitesimal my patience did), I was told my results would get the adjacent day. Still gasping, my archetypal thought was that I could’ve gone longer. That lingering uncertainty is portion of what makes VO2 max specified a maddening and compelling metric.

VO2 Max, Explained

“VO2 max is an nonsubjective measurement of however a quality vigor strategy tin instrumentality successful oxygen and utilize it during exercise,” says Elizabeth Gardner, an subordinate prof of orthopedic country astatine Yale University School of Medicine.

Your assemblage is ever consuming oxygen to nutrient energy, but VO2 max captures the maximum magnitude of oxygen your strategy tin usage astatine highest effort. It's fundamentally what happens erstwhile you’re moving arsenic hard arsenic you perchance can. A precocious VO2 max means your bosom and lungs are much businesslike astatine delivering humor to your muscles, and your muscles are amended astatine extracting oxygen from your humor to make adenosine triphosphate (ATP).

“It’s the champion predictor we presently person for premature mortality,” says Malene Lindholm, an workout physiologist and elder probe technologist astatine Stanford Cardiovascular Medicine. Higher VO2 max levels correlate with a little hazard of cardiovascular disease, benignant 2 diabetes, stroke, and definite cancers. Beyond illness prevention, stronger cardiovascular fittingness is besides linked to amended sleep, improved mood, and a higher wide prime of life.

“It's particularly utile for anyone superior astir highest show and endurance sports,” says Tyler McQuality, subordinate manager of the Center for Sports Innovation astatine Illinois Tech University. “There are definite intervals you tin tally based connected VO2 max pacing and effort.”