Your maximum ability to utilize oxygen during exercise, expressed in litres of oxygen per minute as an absolute value, or millilitres per kilogram of bodyweight per minute as a relative value (to compare athletes to one another). You can improve it with aerobic work, with anaerobic work, or with heavy resistance training.
Are there breathing exercises that could boost Vo2 or breathing patterns you could use while exercising to increase this? After all, oxygen intake must have a good bit to do with how you breathe and lung capacity.
Yeah or I could do Hiit with this in my mouth. http://www.copd-breather.com/diagram.jpg Wouldn't that be so wonderfully grueling? I'd probably die! lol
Gornex is right as well. Any kind of aerobic activity at a high enough intensity will improve VO2max. HIIT will also improve VO2max. Do you really think marathon runners do HIIT when training? They run, and run, and run, and run 100's of kilometers a week. Thats their training, and they have some of the highest VO2maxs in the world. The catch is the 'high enough intensity' part. You need to get your heart rate up above around about 65%max for cardio to start improving VO2max significantly. If you can run for long lengths of time at 75-80% heart rate max, you will see excellent improvements in VO2max. Strangely enough, your lungs do not change much with training, nor are they able to be trained. that COPD device will help with exhalation muscles, is great for people that have COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), but won't really help anyone with normal lungs. The max volume stays the same. Pretty much all the adaptations occur within the muscle, allowing for greater blood flow and greater oxygen usage.
I realize that having a strong anaerobic threshold is way different than having an aerobic threshold but it seems like having a higher VO2 Max would carry over to both right? Correct me if I'm wrong. But if you were already a good 5K runner and had a good endurance base, do you think that by running hight intensity intervals could increase your VO2 Max which could potentially make you better at the long distance runs? Or other exercises for that matter...?
Your anaerobic threshold is the point where you are at maximum aerobic capacity, so any further energy is created only by the anaerobic system, creating increasing levels of lactate (the exponential increase in lactate is how you can measure the anaerobic threshold). By increasing VO2max, you are inadvertently increasing your anaerobic threshold because you have increase you maximum aerobic capacity. High intensity cardio and HIIT will both increase your VO2max, and your anaerobic threshold. Common ways for endurance runners to train is to run just under their anaerobic threshold and then push just over for a few minutes and then drop back under to allow some recovery, rinse and repeat. In essence this is interval training, but not HIIT as it isn't 100% effort on the high intensity stage.
So will having a higher VO2 max from HIIT carry over to long distance? You didn't really answer my question there.. And why wouldn't breathing exercises to expand your lungs help? I would think that with more surface area within the lungs, you could deliver more oxygen to your body..
Yes a higher VO2max from doing HIIT will carry over and help with endurance exercise. Because breathing exercises don't expand your lungs. Your lungs don't change in size. You can't train them. Once you've hit adulthood, the lungs you have are the lungs you are stuck with.
