Those with an interest in guidelines for physical fitness usually have a question at the back of their mind: what is the single most relevant measurement, and indicator, of fitness? After all, the sooner we can answer this the sooner we can get to focusing our efforts where it counts the most, and reach peak fitness without wasting time and effort. We have the answer for you, plain and simple: it’s your maximal oxygen consumption, or vo2 max.
Your vo2 max is a measurement of the rate at which your body can transport and use the oxygen from the air you breath. Physical fitness is all about the rate your body is able to work at, and the faster your body is able to use oxygen the greater this rate becomes. Your lung capacity is obviously going to be a key factor in determining your maximal oxygen uptake, so the physical fitness training tips we focus on here aim to help you develop your lung capacity.
It’s easy to make the assumption that performing traditional cardiovascular endurance training will increase your lung capacity; it’s the most commonly recommended form of exercise, and it involves your lungs consistently working at a faster than usual rate. But if you are to train for as long as the cardio method requires, then you will inevitably working at a low to moderate intensity. If you’re not familiar with intensity within this context, you can think of ‘high intensity’ exercise as something which you could do for just a few minutes at the most, after which it would be physically impossible for you to continue to do it. It’s only when we work at a high intensity that we induce our heart and lungs to increase their reserve capacity. If instead we chose to run for an hour, then the mere fact that we were able to train for that long means that we were only working within our current capacity for work, never challenging our cardiovascular system to improve capacity. What’s worse, training in this way causes us to become more efficient within our existing capacity, and over time this actually causes reserve capacity to decrease, making us more prone to sudden cardiac death. Our bodies are extremely sophisticated systems, and they make adaptive responses according to what they are doing, or what is happening to them. If you’re unsure about what’s happening here you can think of it like this: if you were embarking on a long road journey alone, would you prefer a small car or a big car? You’d want the small car, as it has a smaller, more efficient engine, thereby cutting the cost of your journey. Training for long periods of time at low to moderate intensity can make our hearts and lungs smaller and more efficient in the same way, which is definitely not what we want.
Of all the tips for fitness you’ll come across out there, the most valuable ones deal with developing your maximal oxygen uptake, and avoiding long duration exercise which wastes both time and effort. Turbulence training is our favorite program towards this end.
For more tips to improve physical fitness:
Tips for physical fitness exercise and diet
We also have more great physical exercise tips in the pipeline, please visit us often!
