Muscle and VO2 Max: Filling a Bucket with Leaks in It
Recently, several long-term clients went through a variety of seemingly random life events that restricted their ability to continue strength training and engage in moderate-to-vigorous cardiovascular exercise; random in a sense that predicting both the event and the timing of the event would have been challenging if not impossible. What wasn’t random was the fact that an interruption was bound to happen. An amalgamation of lifestyle factors that were related to both the stage of life and current health status yielded an infinite amount of potential training disruptions. A long trip overseas followed by a respiratory infection, an emergency appendix removal, and spine surgery all caused major breaks in several clients’ ability to exercise. No matter the person, no matter the age, and no matter how diligent the training regimen is, we will all encounter unplanned (and planned) breaks in our strength and cardiovascular training. Now that we’ve acknowledged the inevitability, we can compare the importance of engaging in regular strength and cardiovascular training to a visual we can all relate to, filling a bucket with leaks in the bottom.
Bucket Number One: Muscle
As we age, everything becomes less efficient. Immune function, sensory perception, and perhaps most relevant to the discussion at hand, protein synthesis. In summary, protein synthesis as a concept is our body’s ability to produce proteins that are essential for tissue repair and growth (check out our previous post on all things protein, here). As this process in particular becomes less efficient, our ability to maintain muscle and healthy immune function declines with each passing decade of life. If we compare skeletal muscle, in particular the addition/loss of that muscle, to the aforementioned five-gallon bucket with leaks in the bottom, the visualization starts to crystallize. With each strength-training session that we (or our personal trainer) subject ourselves to, assuming the training stimulus (weight lifted or repetitions performed) is challenging enough, we have an opportunity to add water to the bucket. The harsh reality in this scenario is that there is always a leak in the bucket, muscle mass being lost, albeit at an imperceptibly slow rate. The amount of muscle in a human body is a dynamic value, constantly moving up or down based on the environment said human exists in.
Thinking of each strength training workout as the addition of a cup of water to the bucket is a helpful analogy if we start to lose sight of the “why” behind our workouts. There won’t always be an event, competition, or quantitative goal to strive for, so having a deeper understanding of why strength training should be looked at as a “non-negotiable” becomes increasingly important with each decade of life.
Bucket Number Two: VO2 Max
The maximum volume of oxygen your body can consume during exercise, otherwise known as “VO2 Max,” is equally as important as the amount of muscle you have. Depending on who you ask, different exercise science professionals will place slightly more importance on one versus another, but for the sake of brevity, we can say that both of these values are extremely important. VO2 Max, like muscle mass, is constantly adapting to one’s environment. Stop physical activity for a few days for illness, vacation, or business trip, and the mechanisms underlying your body’s ability to consume oxygen start becoming less productive. And, if we think again of our bucket analogy, that leak in the bottom starts to drain our banked VO2. Not to worry, though; most people can regain most of what is lost once they start back up again. Whether it be a brisk walk, a bike ride, or taking the stairs every day to your office on the fifth floor, your body is constantly adapting to the typical demands of daily life. Once that brisk walk becomes relatively easy, you can either keep the water level consistent in your bucket, or, if you know that unplanned and planned breaks in exercise regularity are inevitable (like previously mentioned), you might want to add a little more when you can.
Every Decade, Another Leak
The cruel reality of this metaphor is that as we age, especially after the age of 50, our muscle mass and VO2 max become harder and harder to maintain. Not only do they become harder to maintain, but it becomes more challenging to add more to each proverbial bucket. It’s almost as if over the course of each decade, some hidden force is slowly creating another leak in the bucket, making our values decline more rapidly as we age.
It is for this reason that strength and cardiovascular training become more and more important with every lap around the sun. And just like we go for physicals to gain a better understanding of important data points like our lipid panel, fasting A1C (three month average of blood sugar levels), and blood pressure, it is becoming increasingly important to garner that same understanding of the two aforementioned values, muscle mass and VO2 max. Once we know what those values are, especially the earlier in life we can obtain baselines, the better our training protocols (or the ones recommended by a trained exercise professional) can reflect our goals.
The big difference between the two values of interest (muscle mass and VO2 max) and other metrics such as fasting A1C, Lp(a), and blood pressure, is that the latter are somewhat challenging to change with specific lifestyle modifications, whereas focusing on improving the former can almost assuredly have a positive impact on all aspects of health (including fasting A1C, Lp(a), and blood pressure). All that to say that if we focus on improving our cardiovascular capacity and amount of lean tissue in our body, we can positively affect all other important metrics!
In conclusion
Flashing back to the three client examples at the beginning of this post, we can start to appreciate the importance of strength training and challenging our cardiovascular system on a regular basis. Important not necessarily because these individuals had specific recreational/athletic endeavors they were preparing for (although that is also a great motivator), but because they understood that the only thing constant in life is change. Being prepared for the inevitable training disruption due to travel, illness, or surgery, and ensuring that each bucket had enough muscle and VO2 in reserve was vital to each person’s longevity and ability to return to training. Don’t let your levels drop into a critically low position and build up your reserves when the times are good! Also, if you need somewhere to get a baseline, click the link below to schedule your discounted appointment at VQ Labs for both of these tests so we can work together to ensure our training programs are working the way they should.
Yours in health,
Sam