Transcription
Petra Tia told me that V2 Max is the single most important metric when looking at someone's longevity. How much truth do you think is in that?
I I think that absolutely he's right. I think VO2 max is one of the single, and and and the thing I love about it is that it's something that you can measure. It's a biomarker. I think it's one of the most important things, absolutely. And there's, you know, there's there's some evidence that like doing doing this vigorous exercise is important, but it has to be like a longer interval type of exercise. So, you know, at least 1 minute, that would be sort of the minimum, but like better if you can get to four minutes.
So there's something called the Norwegian 4x4 protocol. And that's four minutes at the highest intensity that you can maintain for that entire four minutes, followed by three minutes recovery of like light light exercise. I mean, you want your heart rate to come down so that you could do it again. Four times, right? So the miserable sounds absolutely miserable. The Norwegian 4x4.
And, you know, there was a study, and I like I like this is one of the studies that inspired me. And this is this was a study out of, uh, UT Southwest and Dallas. And, um, the study took 50-year-olds that were healthy, but they were not physically active. So they didn't have like type two diabetes and all that, but they weren't active. They're also drained. Exactly. They're drained. And they put them on a pretty intensive training protocol for two years. Okay? Two years. It was a two-year intervention. And it was a progressive protocol. So obviously, when you have an untrained person, you don't just ride out the bat Norwegian 4x4 day one. No, that's not going to happen. So it took them six months to kind of work up their their their training, right? Their endurance. And by the time they got to their six-month mark, they were doing about, you know, four hours a week of what's called maximal intensity exercise. So this is vigorous. This is this is hours a week of maximal intensity. Yeah. Wow. So they were doing so they were basically doing it was like as high as you can maintain, you know, vigorous intensity workout for 30 minutes, basically. So they're doing these 30-minute workouts where you're doing like 75, 80% max heart rate for 30 minutes. Okay? So they're doing that eight times a week. Yeah. I mean, so no, they're also doing they're doing other things as well. So they're doing it's not when I say four hours a week, they're exercising four hours a week. They're also I thought you meant they were doing four hours of this Norwegian 4x4. No, no, no, no, no. They were doing exercise four hours a week. Okay? Um, but they were doing, um, a majority of that was maximal intensity exercise. So a lot of that was they were doing like 30-minute sessions of this, and I think they were probably doing like one and a half to two hours of that. And then they were also doing some strength training. And then they were doing the Norwegian 4x4. So it was kind of a a nice sort of balanced. And then the control group was doing this sort of, I say strength training, but it was more, I guess, body weight, you know, kind of stuff. Um, the control group was doing that. So it was a type of sort of body weight training, but it wasn't high intensity. Like it wasn't like the the CrossFit kind of stuff that you could do. It was it was more like lower stretching kind of stuff, maybe yoga is kind of thing.
And, um, so so after two years, these people, like the cardiac structure, so as we age, our heart gets smaller, and it gets stiffer. And this happens, it's like part of aging. Um, that results in a lot of things. So cardiovascular disease risk goes up, but also like your exercise performance and capacity goes down. So so after that two years of, you know, doing this pretty vigorous intensity exercise protocol, their, um, the people, the 50-year-olds, they reversed their cardiac structure aging by 20 years. So their hearts were looking more like 30-year-old hearts versus 50-year-old hearts. And this is after two years of doing this. And to me, it was so motivating to go, wow, these 50-year-olds can do this. Like, these were untrained people who don't usually work out. And by the end of these two years, I mean, they were like getting at it. Um, and so I've, you know, kind of stepped up my my game a bit. Also, like I've got a coach coming and I'm working with, um, two two days a week. And to do, I'm doing a lot of, uh, it's like a resistance training, but like kind of interval as well. So I'm getting the high heart rate and and that interval.
It's so funny to see Peter here and yourself kind of converge on this new. It's not it's not as if it's new, but it was definitely something that I wasn't hearing about four years ago. I wasn't hearing people talk about this. Everything was zone two. It was, you know, like go slow to go fast or whatever the tagline is. And, um, one of the problems with zone two is that you need quite a high duration, like by design, because, you know, 45 minutes or an hour multiple times per week, which is actually difficult. So lots of benefits of improving V2 Max. What are? Take us through the Norwegian 4x4 again, and then what else is in there? If there was a protocol or a number of protocols you were going to design, here's a program that you can take away today into your gym and do that will help to improve your V2 Max. What would you tell people?
I would say the Norwegian 4x4 is by far the best. And you're going to get the, if for the people that are really, um, determined and committed, that would be it. That would be the four minutes of the exercise intensity is hard as you can go and maintain it for that entire four minutes. So obviously, dig into that. What what do you mean as hard as you can go and maintain it? What does that mean? It means you don't want to go like all out, like like 95% of your your max heart rate, um, because then you can only last for like a minute, you know? And so so then you're going to go down, you're going to you're going to slow down, right? So what it means is like, you want to go, you know, it might for some people, it might be like 75% max heart rate, right? So some people might be 80%. But you want to go as hard as you can for the four minutes, uh, without like really slowing down. So you kind of have to pace yourself a little bit, but you don't want to go too slow, right? Like you you definitely can't be talking. Like you should not be able to talk for sure when you're doing it. So it's hard enough that you just absolutely can't talk, but it's not all out. So four minutes, four minutes, and then three minutes of totally light. Like you're going all the way. This is like, you know, you're you're like back to like zone one, if you want to call it something. If can come come down, come down. Yeah. And you're doing that for three minutes because you want to give your, you want to recover so that you can do it again. And it and you repeat it. It's a four, it's a four-time protocol. So you do it once and then you repeat it three times. Or you just call the 4x4. I think that's probably one of the the best protocols to improve V2 Max.
Now, uh, Dr. Martin Gabala, um, I've had him on my podcast. He's a real expert on these high-intensity interval training protocols. He does a lot of research on it at McMaster University, um, in Ontario, Canada. And he also says, you know, there there's evidence that a one-minute protocol, so like just even doing like an interval like one-minute interval and then doing that like, you know, a few times also can improve V2 Max. So that's a little easier. And also it's easier. Like I like I I do one-minute intervals. Um, I'm trying to now incorporate the 4x4 into my routine, um, which is coaches help with that. So, um, but it, I imagine it's a motivation thing, which is probably one of the biggest hurdles to get over that. Just if you've got any program in front of you that isn't the Norwegian 4x4 for the day, you go, maybe it's back in biceps, or maybe I'll just go for a little jog. It's like Manana, Manana, Manana. Yeah, it is. But again, like I said, you do have to do, you try to make it consistent. So, frequency per week? Well, the Norwegian 4x4 would be like one time a week. Oh, okay. And that's that's the that's the hard day. That's less. That's less. Miserable. Hard day. It is. Okay. Okay. Is there any benefit to going twice per week? Probably yeah. But it's been so much better said. But these 50-year-olds, yeah, these 50-year-olds did it one time a week for two years, and they reversed their cardiac structure aging by 20 years. Um, of course, they were they were also doing other vigorous intensity exercise. It wasn't the torturous Norwegian 4x4. Yep. You know, like so if Norwegian 4x4 is gold standard at the moment for improving V2 Max, what would be some examples of other vigorous exercise, uh, workouts? What else is in that bucket?
Well, people can do what they enjoy doing. So you can go for a run. Like I often go for a run, and, you know, I'm doing 75, 80% my max heart rate. Usually, it's like a 20-minute run that I do that, you know, so like as as intense as you can maintain for 20 minutes, like that's what you want to do. You want to kind of get that, you get a feeling for that. Um, so if you like runs, because there's a lot of benefits to running, you're out in nature. Well, I guess some people do it on treadmills. I'm not so big on treadmills. Like I I'll do them like when I go to a gym or something traveling, but I like running out in nature. I think there's it's just there's lots of benefits to doing that. Um, some people like to get on their bike and cycle. So like you can just get on your bike and do a 20 to 30 minute, uh, 75, 80% max heart rate cycle, right? So what what aiming for here is 75 to 80% max heart rate for around about 20 minute expo. You can. Or you can do, you could do like a high-intensity interval training. So, um, so high-intensity interval training would be, you're going to, you're going to go more than 85, 80%. Right? You might go, you're going to do like more of like a submaximal, perhaps, um, perhaps even a maximal interval. So you can go up to 90, 95% max heart rate. So that would be, I mean, obviously, you can only maintain that for like so long, right? Some people might be 30-second pushes style thing. I do a lot of Tattas as well. Um, often times I like to do something every day. Most days of the week. And it's funny, I kind of adopted this this routine when I was I was kind of trying to, uh, do a little bit like Joe Rogan sober October. But it was like every day October, I was trying to work out every day. And I noticed I was like, I could do this. I'm doing it for like one month. And I don't, I wasn't going as hard as like the this guys doing the sober October where they were like competition. It was like they were just in the, if you do something every ex, do something every day. So sometimes I'll do like a 10-minute Tatta where I get on there and I just go hard for 10 minutes to 20. You know, it's most of the time I'll do a 45-second on, um, 15-second off. So it's a three to one ratio. I really like that one. But sometimes I'll do 20 seconds on, 10, uh, 10-second off. So it's like I do both. But like, even just 10 minutes again, I time it around like, like I got I'm going to go do work. I want to feel motivated. I want to feel better. I want to be more focused in all my game. And I just get on there for the bike for 10 minutes and do it.
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