Hello and welcome to this episode of the ESG Fitness podcast.

I feel like it needs to have a more snappy name than that.

I'll come up with that later.

Anyway, I hope you've all had a lovely week and I'm going to start this podcast with a brilliant question from Sharon,

partly because I forgot her question last week and partly because this is actually a brilliant question from Sharon, partly because I forgot her question last week,

and partly because this is actually a brilliant question,

and I like getting geeky about this stuff.

So her question was about heart rate max.

So the usual way to measure your maximum heart rate is a very crude and actually quite random equation which is 220 minus your age.

Now various things can affect your heart rate max and actually various things can affect

them at different times. So for example stress, fitness, heat and you can't really train

your heart rate max. So having a higher maximum heart

rate doesn't necessarily mean you are a better athlete. And it's good to remember that everyone's

heart rate will drop as they age. But this, again, does not mean that you're necessarily losing

fitness. So you could definitely be improving fitness

as you age, yet your heart rate max would still be dropping. So it is not your heart rate

max that would determine your fitness level. It's actually the ability to exercise at a given

heart rate intensity. And even that's not quite true but improved fitness would

imply or probably result in you being able to train for longer at a higher percentage of your

heart rate max a much better predictor of fitness is your VO2 max, which is the maximum amount of oxygen

your body can uptake and utilize during incremental exercise.

Now, VO2 max is trainable, so endurance training will increase your VO2 max if you're untrained.

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