Dr. Andy Galpin

Scientists and people that are more advanced in this field might like to use the absolute versions.

Depending on the scenario, that might make more sense.

But for now, let's just stick to the relative.

What that means is how many milliliters of oxygen are you using per kilogram of body weight per minute?

So you'll see them expressed as things like your VO2 max is 50 milliliters per kilogram per minute.

So 50 milliliters of oxygen per kilogram of body weight

You can kind of think about VO2 max almost on a scale of zero to 100.

And so the average person that would kind of say walk out of my classroom, somewhat moderately trained male or female that's, you know, in the neighborhood of 170 pounds or 70 kilos, something like that.

is probably gonna have a VO2 max around 35 to 45 milliliters per kilogram per minute, something in that range.

If you fall below 18 milliliters per kilogram per minute, you're probably crossing below the threshold of what we call independence.

For women, that's about 15 or 16, which means it's very difficult to live independently and by yourself because your fitness is so low, going through basic activities of daily living become challenging.

So what I'd like to share with you is not only the normative values, but also the highest we've ever seen in terms of VO2 max, cardiac output, and stroke volume.

Now, there's so much data on VO2 max.

We can actually break this down by age and by sex in really specific numbers.

So if you know your exact age, you can go ahead and look these up in the discharge.

But I'll give you a couple, again, just to give you a ballpark.

Let's say you were a female between 40 and 49 years old and your VO2 max was 28.

That would put you as what we consider to be below average.

If you wanted to go from below average to average, you'd have to go into the 32 to 36 milliliters per kilogram range.

If you wanted to go all the way to elite, tell me what's the best ever, you'd be needing to surpass the mark of 47 milliliters.