Measure Your Fitness Level with the Vo2 Max Measure

When you hear the word "fitness" it can refer to many things: flexibility, muscle fitness, and so on. Most people usually use the word when referring to aerobic or cardio fitness. This is basically a measure of how effective your system is of delivering oxygen to all the cells in your body.

As you become more active, your body undergoes certain physiological changes that will tend to increase your cardio fitness levels. The following changes generally happen:-

Muscle fibres get larger.

Blood vessels supplying the muscle fibres will increase in number.

Energy release from the cells becomes more efficient.

Other changes will also occur. The heart becomes more muscular and grows in size, especially the part which does the most pumping of blood.

So what is the best way of gauging your aerobic fitness? One way is to measure your VO2 max. The VO2 max measure is the maximum capacity of your body to transport oxygen during an incremental exercise. The name is derived from V - volume per unit time and O2 - oxygen.

Usually, the subject runs on a treadmill which increases in intensity and wears a face mask to measure the oxygen content of the air they breathe out. There are other more simple ways of calculating your VO2 max without resorting to using complicated apparatus in a science laboratory. A very simple way to get a quick estimate of your VO2 max is a walking fitness test. Simply time how long it takes you to walk 1 mile as briskly as you can, and then measure your heart rate. These figures can be plugged into the appropriate equation, you can find one on the internet, along with your age, sex, and weight, and you will get an approximate figure for your VO2 max.

Once you have completed the test, just plug the numbers into a Vo2max calculator Now it is up to you to improve your score.