Dr. Andy Galpin

Or we've got pre-med and I didn't want to do that.

And really the only kind of exercise physiology programs involved exercise, but it was really more public health, disease prevention, treatment management and stuff like that.

And so I never really found a home academically.

At least initially.

So I remember going through school.

And again, while the exercise was a part of that, it was really from the perspective of, oh, yeah, you know, athletes do that.

And then there's kind of exercise, you should park your car in the end of the parking lot, you should get more steps in and you can go upstairs.

And it was kind of that public health message, which is awesome stuff and incredibly important.

It just wasn't my passion.

So I kind of remember almost feeling like I didn't really have much of a home academically, and I would learn stuff, and I was excited about learning the human body, and that stuff fascinated me and still does.

So from the cardiovascular perspective, I just really didn't care that much about that stuff until we got into doing things like testing the VO2 max.

I'll tell you what that is a little bit later, and we'll walk through it.

But that got my attention, right?

Because it's like, hey, this is a maximal exercise test, and it was something we could do for athletics to see –

Who's the most fit?

Who had the best endurance?

And if you look at the research on sport performance, there are some clear associations.

In fact, some of them are very highly tied to success in sports and your VO2 max.

Now, classically, you would think of something maybe like an endurance runner, a marathon runner per se.

And while the VO2 max is not the only thing at all that predicts performance, clearly it is higher in those individuals relative to athletes in, say, baseball or golf or something like that.