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Rob777
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Joined: 17 Feb 2004
Posts: 6
Location: South Africa
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 Posted: 02/19/04 - 02:39 Post subject: VO2 Max
Hi everyone
Apologies for what might be a very elementary question. And also if it's been answered before.
I've always understood an athlete's VO2 max to be genetic and there was very little that a runner could do in the hope of elevating it. Now I hear people are saying that it might not be so gene-dependant after all, and that with the correct training your VO2 max can be increased from 10% to as much as 43%. Has anybody else come across literature similar to this? If so, did they describe ways to train to increase the V02 max? All the articles I've read seem very vague on this point.
If anybody could shed some light on this I'd very much appreciate it.
Cheers.
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CoachCraig
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Joined: 23 Dec 2003
Posts: 276
Location: Eugene, OR
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Posted: 02/19/04 - 13:38 Post subject:
Those are very interesting links.
On the original question, what your VO2 max starts at and the maximum it can reach with training is genetically determined. However, you can change it within this genetically pre-determined range with training. It is just that you won't get this to 80 ml/kg/min unless you had the right genetic makeup to get there.
The good news is VO2 max doesn't mean a whole lot. That is where vVO2 max comes in, as discussed in TriBob's links. This factors in running efficiency, but still fails to take into account lactate threshold.
Bottom line is, none of this is especially important to your training unless you plan on making regular visits to a exercise physiology lab for testing. Daniels and others make use of these concepts to create a training model, but read Noakes "Lore of Running" to help put this in the proper context before taking LT and VO2 max "Zone" paces too seriously.
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