How to improve your VO2 max

You improve your VO2 max by combining a large amount of easy aerobic training with a smaller amount of hard, high-intensity work, repeated consistently over months. Most people can raise their VO2 max meaningfully, and the biggest gains come from training the right amounts at the right intensities rather than simply training harder more often.

Can you actually improve your VO2 max?

Yes. Your genetics set a broad range, but training moves you within it, and for most people there is plenty of room. People starting from an untrained base tend to see the largest gains, often in the region of ten per cent or more with structured training, whilst well trained athletes improve more slowly but still improve. VO2 max naturally declines with age, but consistent training slows that decline substantially, so improving it is worthwhile at any age.

The training that works: mostly easy, some hard

The approach with the strongest evidence behind it is often called polarised training: spend the large majority of your time, commonly around eighty per cent, at an easy aerobic intensity, and a small minority at genuinely hard intensities. The easy work builds the aerobic base, the mitochondria and the blood supply that let your muscles use oxygen, whilst the hard work provides the stimulus that lifts the ceiling. Getting this balance right is the single most common thing recreational athletes get wrong, usually by making their easy days too hard and their hard days not hard enough. Our guides to training zones and to Zone 2 training explain how to keep the two genuinely separate.

High-intensity intervals: the direct stimulus

Hard intervals near your maximum are the most direct driver of a higher VO2 max. A well known example is the four by four protocol, four bouts of around four minutes at a hard effort with a few minutes of easy recovery between them, performed once or twice a week. These sessions are demanding, so they need proper recovery around them, and they work best sitting on top of a solid base of easy aerobic training rather than replacing it.

Do not neglect strength and consistency

Strength training supports your engine by improving efficiency and resilience, so you hold good form as you tire and stay free of the niggles that interrupt training. Beyond the sessions themselves, the boring factors decide most of your progress: turning up week after week, sleeping enough, and fuelling properly, which is where knowing your real metabolism helps. The athlete who trains sensibly for six months beats the one who trains brilliantly for three weeks and then stops.

How long does it take to improve VO2 max?

You can expect to feel fitter within a few weeks of consistent training, but meaningful, measurable change in VO2 max usually takes two to three months of steady work. The exact rate depends on your starting point, your training history and how consistent you are. This is precisely why measuring at the start and re-testing later is useful: it shows whether your plan is actually working rather than leaving you to guess.

Why measured zones get you there faster

At Hanbury, improving your VO2 max starts with measuring it. Your VO2 max is measured directly from your breath during the uVida test, taken to the point of exhaustion, and the same test gives us your personal training zones and an estimate of your anaerobic threshold, so your easy days are genuinely easy and your hard days land in the right place. Your results are read with you by an expert and set into a plan as part of the Hanbury Method of Test, Train, Track and Transform, with re-testing to prove the change. VO2 max and training-zone testing is available in Milton Keynes from Level 2 of the Performance Blueprint (£495), with the Blueprint starting from £197.