High VO2max associated with poorer exercise economy

🩸 🔥 You probably learned that high VO2max is great for endurance performance. The higher the VO2, the better the athlete…

👀 We recently finished a study where we examined physiological parameters of elite CrossFit® athletes, one of the many interesting findings was that these athletes actually had a pretty low VO2max (55-65 ml O2/kg/min). With ‘low’, we mean compared to elite endurance athletes coming from other sports (cycling, running, rowing…).

🧐 🔬 So we did some digging and found that maximal oxygen uptake (VO2max) might be negatively associated with movement efficiency. This suggests that athletes with a super high VO2 might have lower movement efficiency. It could be that movement efficiency, rather that pure endurance capacity is the major determinant to excel at high-intensity, technical sports such as CrossFit®.

Read paper here: PMID: 31556836

https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/japplphysiol.00223.2019?rfr_dat=cr_pub++0pubmed&url_ver=Z39.88-2003&rfr_id=ori%3Arid%3Acrossref.org

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#oxygen #uptake #economy #exercise #training #gohard #long #short #intervals #science #mitochondria