Podcast Transcription: VO2 Max Essentials: How to Improve it and What it Means for Health, Performance, and Longevity with Brady Holmer

Ted Ryce: Brady Holmer, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for taking the time to come and talk to the listeners of the Legendary Life podcast about VO2 max. There's a big story about zone two cardio, VO2 max, longevity. Everyone wants to hear about it and you wrote a book about it. So really looking forward to diving in. 

Brady Holmer: Yeah, Ted, thanks for inviting me on. I was super stoked when you reached out on Twitter. And yeah, I think all the talk about zone two cardio, sometimes as much as it can be sometimes frustrating that that's the only thing people are talking about. It's exciting to me being an exercise physiologist because people are excited about fitness, they're excited about exercising, and VO2 max, this whole concept that people may not have ever been aware of, now they're like, oh. 

Everybody's interested in VO2 Max now. So it's very exciting to like see this kind of in the popular media. So I'm very excited to talk about it with you. 

Ted Ryce: Yeah, I'd love to start out just a little bit about you. How did you get interested in this topic? I know you're a runner, but what's the back story, your superhero origin story, if you will, of how you got into VO2 max and exercise physiology? 

Brady Holmer: Yeah, so like you mentioned, I am a runner. I've kind of been a runner my entire life. Started when I was like 13, ran cross country in middle school, high school, ran in college and then now into my, I just turned 30 and I still continue to run. I really enjoy it a lot. So I've just always been into nutrition and health and like particularly endurance sports. And then as an undergrad, I studied exercise science. So that was kind of my major. 

It was one of those things where like, some people switch their majors up a few times, you know, when they get to college, but like I pretty much knew like right when I entered, I never changed my major. I, you know, declared exercise science as my major as an undergrad and like, you know, just kept doing that. And so, you know, learned a lot about testing VO2 max then and just kind of like the fundamentals of exercise science.  

And then, you know, I graduated, continued on to graduate school where I did exercise physiology as a major as well. 

And in undergrad and graduate school, one of the main things I did was cardio metabolic tests or maximal exercise tests where, you know, we put people on the treadmill, have them run until they can't run anymore, what would be more commonly referred to as a VO2 max test. 

So, you know, I'm kind of very familiar with how to test it, why it's important, kind of it feels like to do a VO2 max test. I've done a couple of them myself. And so, so yeah, just, you know, I love exercise and just love physiology of exercise and then you know as you mentioned before this idea of VO2 max had started, has started to get pretty popular but interestingly I had I had written a few blog posts on VO2 max probably like a couple years ago now just when I started seeing these very interesting studies on like how it correlated with or associated with rather longevity so there were like these studies showing like all the higher VO2 max the longer you live or the lower your risk for all posts on that and so then you know a couple years later when you know Attia and Huberman and all those guys started talking about it I was like oh cool you know this is it's getting popular now so yeah that's kind of the story of how I got interested in this it's just always been something that I'm interested in being somebody being an endurance athlete and whatnot and an exercise physiologist. 

Ted Ryce: Yeah, and I want to tell you if you're listening right now and you want to check out Brady's book, you can check it out on Amazon. It's called VO2 Max Essentials and Brady's name is spelled B-R-A-D-Y-H-O-L-M-E-R and it's called again VO2 Max Essentials: The comprehensive guide to aerobic fitness, how to improve it, and what it means for health, performance, and longevity.  

And I want to even start, Brady, and say something a little bit controversial. Now, it's going to be more controversial for me to say, because everybody is going to think you're biased, because you're this exercise physiologist, and you just wrote a book on exercise. And it's something that you and I have both said variations of on Twitter. But and just for reference, I'm let's say I say I'm like a fat loss coach, right? Body transformation coach. So as you and I both know, that's mostly about nutrition, not exercise. Although exercise plays an important role. 

The big lever to pull there is nutrition, no doubt. However, the controversial thing I wanna say and start this conversation out with is people think that nutrition is the more powerful thing for your health, and you and I both disagree with that. 

Brady Holmer: I would tend to disagree and I guess, you know, to provide my reasoning. It's funny how why this is, and I don't really understand why it's like, why it's so controversial. I guess there are some topics like on social media where like why are like people arguing about like this. 

And the thing I hate the most to hear and I'm sure that you've heard like a variation of this or whatever in maybe even forgive me if you've posted something like this, but people are like, oh,health or whatever is like, it's 20% nutri- or 20- 80% nutrition and 20% exercise. I'm just like, like where do you even get those numbers from? Like it doesn't really even like make sense.  

So it's like, you're going to focus 80% of your energy on what you eat and 20% on exercise. So I hate kind of like platitudes like that in general when people say stuff, but I guess the idea is, you know, I've changed my mind a little bit in the past couple years on like, I think in terms of maybe body composition and you know, if somebody is looking to lose weight, I think focusing on diet may be, it's definitely important and maybe even more important initially than like focusing on exercise, like let's clean up your diet. You know, if you need to lose weight in order to exercise, then diet can certainly...  

It needs to be one of those levers that you probably pull first. You know, if somebody's 400 pounds, you know, you're not going to tell them to go and start running for two hours a day to lose weight or whatever. 

Ted Ryce: Try to squat half your body weight or two times your body weight, not gonna happen. 

Brady Holmer: But exactly, exactly. No, not too good for the knees. So I think that though regarding health, I mean, I saw,I don't know if you know who Stuart Phillips is. He's like a pro big protein researcher, but he had 

Ted Ryce: He's been on this show a couple times. 

Brady Holmer: Oh great great, Stuart's awesome. And he said something the other day, he was like, you can't, and I've said maybe a similar variation of this, but he said like, you know, you can't out eat a lack of, or you can't eat a lack of exercise. 

So basically like you can eat as healthy as you want, you know, you can have the perfect diet, you know, maybe it's like low carb or you know, you're no processed foods and no seed oils no sugar. But if you don't exercise you will never achieve optimal like health like you have to move you have to exercise every day or you know, not necessarily every day but a majority of days during the week.  

So you can't you know eat a diet that is going to kind of make up for your lack of exercise. Whereas I think the opposite doesn't necessarily true I think to some extent you can quote-unquote out exercise a bad diet.  

I know that's kind of controversial as well but I'm in this isn't to say like eat an awful diet and exercise and it you know forgives all the sins of that bad diet, but I do think that if you're physically active, you know, you can have a little more wiggle room with your diet you know you can have kind of those, that eighty twenty, you know, perspective on diet where like you know twenty percent of the time you're eating kind of like maybe not the ideal foods eighty percent of the time you're kind of on I think exercise sort of allows you that wiggle room.  

So yeah i think that you know that just exercise is certainly important for health there's in my opinion you know you can't be in optimal health without exercise uh... and diet you know there's just a lot less agreement on what constitutes a healthy diet.  

Everybody's like, yes, you need to exercise, you need to do cardio, you need to do strength, but with when it comes to diet, it's just kind of like there are multiple ways you can eat healthy. There are lots of ways to quote unquote like diet. So I'm, you know, like you said, biased being an exercise physiologist, but I think diet or exercise is a little more important. 

Should be given a higher priority than diet when it comes to general health. Not necessarily maybe weight loss, but certainly when it comes to health. 

Ted Ryce: Yeah, and I want to, before we get into the whole VO2 max conversation, I want to just talk a little bit more about that because there are some people right now who are either very offended that someone would even say that because diet is so sacred or just maybe a little bit confused.  

So the thing is that you can, with exercise, you can, let's say, outraining a bad diet. What I think of, it's like you can be, let's say, obese. And you can, and that comes from eating too many calories relative to how many you burn. 

Brady Holmer: Another controversial statement by you. 

Ted Ryce: But only if you're on social media, not if you're, like, not in scientific circles. That's like saying, well, the earth has gravity. But anyway, story for another time. So you can be obese and you can exercise, and it can help you lose visceral fat. As an example, it can help improve markers of cardiometabolic health, but you're still obese.  

And it's this, and the whole obesity thing, and that's not why you're here today, but I think it's even important to talk about for those people who are really struggling with fat loss. It's like, you can be in great shape and have more body fat than what you might think is visually sexy or optimal, right? You can still be in great shape. You wanna say something about that, Brady? 

Brady Holmer: Yeah, I've,this is actually, so there's kind of this concept called,like metabolically healthy obesity. And I've actually read some studies that say like it doesn't necessarily exist. And then some people, some studies that will say like that it does exist. And essentially what the concept is, is kind of what you were referring to as like, take somebody who, you know, let's use the formal definition of obesity. 

So say somebody with a BMI over 25 or I guess 25 would be overweight. So somebody with a BMI over 30 is considered to have obesity. So you take somebody who has a BMI of, let's say, 32, but they exercise, you know, five days a week, they're doing all their aerobic zone two cardio, they're getting in there like two to three weightlifting sessions per week. But you know, they're still, they're still what you would categorize as having obesity. Then, you know, compare their health to somebody who is say, a BMI of 23, so they're considered to be normal weight, but they don't exercise.  

Metabolically healthy obesity would say the person with obesity is healthier than that thin person or normal weight person because they exercise. So you can have good cardiometabolic health even if you have obesity. So again, I think some evidence would say that you can obviously do that. And obviously, somebody with obesity who exercises is better than somebody with obesity who doesn't exercise. 

So, you know, exercise makes you healthier regardless of kind of what class you're in terms of body weight. But then I think, you know, there's some evidence would then suggest like, no, it's kind of weight is what matters more, so you know you need to get down to like normal weight even if you have obesity you're not necessarily healthier than somebody who's normal weight even if you exercise and they don't. So I don't necessarily think there's like a complete consensus there but it's kind of a very interesting thing to think about. 

And I guess this is another conversation, but people argue over whether obesity and overweight defined by BMI is even relevant anyway because it's kind of a flawed measure. Body fat is obviously better, but not everybody has the ability to assess their body fat levels. So BMI is a quick and easy way to generally assess whether somebody is overweight or obese, but most people can use your eyes as well to kind of tell. 

Ted Ryce: It's the veins. If you don't have the veins, you got to anyway. Yeah, absolutely. And I think so. So I'm just setting the stage a little bit because I want people to feel like you can be in great shape. Actually, I promote like, hey, get lean, right? Get lean for sure. I've never had a client at least who's done it in a healthy manner, not have tremendous benefits beyond just even if they're hemoglobin A1C was in the normal range, or there were no other issues with them in terms of the cardiometabolic markers, it's like, do it, but just understand, there's some nuance here, it's a little more complicated.  

However, what's not complicated, or maybe it is, and you can all educate us on it, is this idea of VO2 max. So can you talk about... 

Because I've seen the studies. And the studies that I remember were that mixed, like, let's say, football players and hockey players. And when scientists were looking at, all right, who lives the longest here? Those guys who you think are total badasses, the football players and the hockey guys, and they don't live the longest. It's the endurance athletes. And then that led that. 

That was maybe, I don't know, 10 or 15 years ago, something like that. And then the story became, well, it's because of the VO2 max. Can you talk a little bit about that? What is this story there? How did it start? And how did we figure out VO2 max was the thing? 

Brady Holmer: Yeah, so I think there have been multiple studies similar to what you're referring to, where there was probably that one maybe 10 or 15 years ago, and even before then there were some studies on Olympic athletes, the endurance runners, kind of the track and field athletes tended to live a little bit longer than sort of the more strength-oriented sports and things like that. 

So yeah, I think just those kind of observations of like, oh, well, people who, you know, the endurance runners tend to live longer. That kind of led to then studies in just the like general population. One of the more kind of famous ones, I guess, you would call it famous is one called like the Cooper Longitudinal Study.  

And so this is kind of a long-term observational cohort study out of the Cooper Center, which is in Dallas, Texas, I believe, but it's kind of like, it started out as like a gym and now it's kind of like they're using data from people they collected at that gym to publish these studies on longevity and stuff.  

So I think all of these studies are in men, unfortunately, which is kind of weird, but that's just kind of how it goes. They chose to follow up this cohort of men for several years. 

But initially from that study, kind of what they did, they had cardiopulmonary metabolic exercise tests from all the people attending the gym and then they follow them up for however many amounts of years, 20, 30, 40 years or whatever and just seeing that the people who had the higher VO2 max categories tended to live longer, you know, they, I guess, died at a less frequent rate than people in the lower kind of categories of VO2 max.   

The initial studies there and then even since then there have been, you know, some studies published in JAMA and that might be the study that I'm referring to, but just, you know, showing kind of the same thing where, you know, you take people who have you know an exercise test completed at like a hospital or a clinic or something like that.  

So, you know a validated kind of measure of VO2 max is not like they're estimating it or anything which I think is an important point for one because You know you people say like compared to like nutrition you know in nutrition epidemiology they're always like oh people who eat less red meat you know have lower rates of diabetes or people who eat less sugar you know have a lower rate of death but it's nutritional epidemiology is like it's all from self-reported like questionnaires and so who the hell really knows like if that's actually what they were eating or like how valid really is this but with these studies i think what is kind of what enhances their like reliability and their trustworthiness um is that you know these people self-report their VO2 max.  

They actually had a cardiopulmonary exercise test done in a laboratory and then death records were obtained. So it's like you can't really have a more black and white measure than that.  

But nonetheless, there have been probably three, four, maybe even more studies since those ones that you just talked about, the observations with the Olympic athletes and the Cooper Longitudinal Study just showing that in general, the people with a higher view of, have lower risks of all cause mortality. And then maybe we can talk about there's kind of another argument of yes, higher is better, but like is there a ceiling?  

So, similar to like what we see with exercise, you know, oh, 2000 or 5000 steps per day is better than 2, 7000 is better than 5, but oh, 10,000 is not much better than 7, so like there seems to be a plateau at like 7, so everything above 7 might not get, you know, you have diminishing returns I guess when you get above that. So there's an argument, or not an argument, but kind of a debate if like, does the same thing occur with VO2 max, you know, is it once you're in the good category, is that is that good enough? So, or, you know, if you go to excellent and then elite, do you have even better outcomes compared to somebody in just the good category?  

And as far as I'm concerned, I think the benefits don't seem to diminish even up until like the elite category. So there was one study,that showed like the elite, you know, VO2 max category for based on their age, those people had the lowest rates of all cause mortality compared to anybody in the study.  

So even the people with like the excellent and the good tiers for VO2 max. So it would seem that the fitter you are, like the longer you live, which is kind of an interesting observation because it, you know, wouldn't suggest that like, Oh, I just need to get my VO2 max to 45 and then I'm good. You know, getting it up to 60 doesn't really,benefit me anymore. I think some of the data would suggest that like the more the better so try to get your VO2 max as high as you can essentially.  

And then maybe later on we can talk about why that's important in the setting of aging and like what happens to VO2 max with age. 

Ted Ryce: Yeah, well, let's talk about that. First of all, what is a good VO2 max range? 

Brady Holmer: Yeah, so there's some tables and I don't kind of have them in front of me right now, but I think a good number for most people and you know Ted I don't know like maybe kind of what age group your audience falls into but like if you're in the age range of say 40 to 60 years old I think a good target for a VO2 max would be 50 milliliters per kilogram per minute so that would be like your relative VO2 max. 50 would be a good target to shoot for. Another guy who I like to kind of follow and see on twitter is Alan Kuzins.  

He kind of posted this thing the other day about like shoot for 50, VO2 max, shoot for a 50 resting heart rate, shoot for like 50 push-ups or something like that. It was like this kind of cool rule or whatever. So I think 50 is like a good number to shoot for and that would put you well above average for kind of like people your age. Of course when we talk about like average you know. 

Nobody necessarily wants to be average and kind of like the sick society that we tend to live in so you want to Be you know well above average So yeah, I think I think 50 would be kind of a great like target to shoot for and there are you know different? Standards based on kind of your age and like these you know what decades you're in so you know if you're if you're in your 30s you know having one kind of like 50 to 55 you know might be even better so Once you get into the 60 or above that's kind of where you're getting into like a lot of the endurance athletes might have that.  

Elite endurance athletes, you know, they're going to have a few of two maxes, probably 70 and above. So like 70 to 90 range is kind of like elite endurance athletes, 60, you know, your, your runners, your cyclists and things like that. But yeah, like just 50, I think is a good, is a good target for most people to kind of shoot for. 

Ted Ryce: Got it. And then the next question I think that's important is people want, I mean, people listening to this show, I preach and as do many other people, it's lift weights. And I really do believe that it's hard to say a little bit, but if you had to push me and say, okay, well, what's more foundational? I would say resistance training.  

Simply because of the way that you're able to target different muscles to provide, not just strengthen your muscles and balance in, let's say, your hamstrings and quads and calves, you can target all those different muscles. But also it helps you, I remember working with a client and the guy was doing nothing but biking. And then he was telling me, I'm trying to get in and out of my Porsche and I'm having a really hard time as a CEO, back in Miami Beach.  

And I said show me your squat like just give me a squat and he couldn't do one and It wasn't that he didn't have the leg strength but it's like he lost the movement pattern, something but we were able to like get him to do it again in a few sessions. So the leg strength was there but it's just like you're practicing these movements. 

And if you were going to say, hey, listen, what would you, and I'm biased on this and if you feel differently, I'm happy to hear what you have to say about it. But if you're going to say, hey, listen, I've got two days to work out, what would you do? I would tell someone, do a full body resistance training routine. And so I want to hear what you have to say about that resistance training, develop your VO2 max, if it does at all. 

Brady Holmer: Yeah, so it's kind of interesting that you bring that up because there was actually like a recent study published and they did resistance training in rowers, a group of rowers and they actually found that just resistance training alone increased their VO2 max and it wasn't due to, so you know maybe not to get like too technical for a moment, but I think that they found that it was independent of increases in their hemoglobin mass.  

So hemoglobin is just you know the protein that carries oxygen in your body. So if you increase your hemoglobin mass, you're going to be able to carry more oxygen in your red blood cells. You're going to be able to, you know, that will increase your VO2 max. That's why athletes, you know, use erythropoietin or EPO. They dope or go to altitude training. 

Ted Ryce: Right, the doping, right. 

Brady Holmer: because those can all increase your hemoglobin mass. But this study, and forgive me because I haven't read it yet, but it did show that resistance training increased the VO2 max, so I'll have to kind of dig into that more and like why that happened. But yeah, I certainly think that it can.  

And the reason for that is going to be because, so if you resistance train, I think it depends on whether that resistance training is helping you to build lean muscle mass. Because if you do increase your lean muscle mass, you're going to have more muscle and you know what muscle is able to consume oxygen. So, at the minimum your, so when we talk about VO2 max we can talk about it in absolute terms.  

So that would be how many liters of oxygen per minute your body is using and then relative which is expressed to your body weight. So if you increase your body weight just by gaining more muscle your VO2 max, your absolute VO2 max will increase. Your relative VO2 max though  may not increase because your body weight is kind of also increasing. 

Ted Ryce: I want to I want to just ask that which one I mean, what's the relevance for health there is that the relative? Important for health at all or are they both important for health? 

Brady Holmer: So yeah, most of the studies are going to use relative VO2 max. So when I said before the shoot for 50, that was expressed in relative terms. So 50 milliliters of oxygen per kilogram of body weight per minute. So most of the studies are gonna use relative VO2 max instead of absolute VO2 max. And because if you just think about it, so. 

I weigh about 150 pounds. So my absolute VO2 max is going to be lower maybe than somebody theoretically say who weighs 400 pounds. They might have a huge absolute VO2 max because they have a big body. It's going to be using a lot of oxygen. But if you express that relative to body weight, their relative VO2 max might be like 25 whereas mine might be like 70 than absolute. But you know. 

Ted Ryce: Did you just drop your VO2 max right now? 

Brady Holmer: It's a little bit above 70. I won't, I won't brag, but yeah, I've had it tested, tested a few times.so which is always fun, but yeah. 

Ted Ryce: Oh, nice, man. That's great. Very cool. So, okay, so there's a study looking at rowers and they improve their VO2 max. Now, that was their, and I know you haven't read this study, but if it's their absolute VO2 max, it's not really important for longevity. It's really about whether it improved their relative VO2 max. 

Brady Holmer: Yeah, in which it likely did. Again, I think both of them probably improved. When a study reports like VO2 max improved, typically they're going to report the change in like relative VO2 max again, because it can be confounded if like, if a study shows that these people increase their VO2 max, but it's like, oh, only their body weight increased. So relative is really all people tend to like, kind of care about and focus on. So I'm sure that's kind of like what that finding was. But yeah, and it was just due to resistance training.  

So kind of cool because often we talk about you can only increase your VO2 max through cardiovascular exercise instead of resistance training. And I myself have probably said something similar. So I think a well-designed kind of resistance training program can increase your VO2 max. 

 Again, I think to some point you're not going to have this exponential increase if you just keep resistance training. I think eventually you have to do some cardiovascular exercise, but it's cool to see that. 

Resistance training could at least complement kind of your cardiovascular fitness regimen to help you get fitter. 

Ted Ryce: Yeah, what I do is I alternate days. I lift weights and then do cardio, some form of cardio. At least that's the goal. And I just feel so much better. I don't notice a huge difference in my body. Actually, if I probably just focus on resistance training alone, I notice that the volume of resistance training helps me look more like I'm super fit and gonna live forever.  

But the cardio though, you know, lowers my resting heart rate, makes me feel amazing, psychologically. So let's talk about this. So you can most likely, we're just getting into this with the science, just figuring out, okay, but you can probably generate some or improve your VO2 max by lifting weights.  

But if you really want to take it to the next level, you've got to do and I know you've talked about the word cardio, and I've talked about the word cardio, and we're just using that term just because it's what people are familiar with.  

But you have to do, let's say, prolonged or steady state exercise for a period of time. Well, why don't you talk about that? What do we know about from the research? What helps people specifically in terms of cardio with raising their VO2 max, their relative VO2 max. 

Brady Holmer: Yeah, so a lot of it is gonna depend, I think like when you start the conversation, a lot of it's gonna depend on, you know, where somebody's starting point is. So like, we'll just, when we get into discussion of kind of like what protocols are gonna like enhance VO2 max, I think we can just assume like, people who have like a baseline, they're fairly fit, you know, they're exercising maybe 100, 150 minutes a week already, they're getting their resistance training in. So they're not like completely sedentary because. 

If you take somebody completely sedentary, I mean, just walking or like, you know, going up the stairs a few times per day, that could probably increase their view to max. So you know, the lower your baseline, the less exercise it takes to increase kind of your view to max and, and the protocol probably doesn't even matter. It's just like, just do something, you know, you can go on a bike and like pedal with a very light resistance and your view to max is going to increase.  

So, I think though, if you just take, you know, somebody who wants to kind of take it to the next level and maybe we'll like focus on that person. So you know, they they exercise already and they have a decent base. I think it's obviously important to get that steady state zone two cardio, like we've been talking about and like it's so popular kind of in like podcasts with guys like Huberman and Attia, they talk about it all the time.  

Zone two cardio is great. Similar to cardio though, I kind of hate the phrase zone two because it's almost like lost its meaning a little bit because like there's a specific definition of zone two and now it kind of, when people say it, it's just like, oh, I know that you're referring to lower-ish intensity aerobic exercise that we could kind of like have a conversation during, which I think is fine.  

You know, we don't need to like define physiologically like what zone two means and stuff. And so just the fact that people kind of have a general understanding of it, I think is good in my opinion. So I try not to... 

Ted Ryce: Brady, are you talking about doing like a max heart rate test and then making sure you're at that heart rate percentage, but most people doing the 220 minus their age, they don't really know if that's really their heart rate max. Is that what you're referring to? 

Brady Holmer: Yeah, exactly. So a lot of the times, yeah, it's like people are defining zone two based on their age predicted maximum heart rate, which like you said is they tell you to say 220 minus your age, which can be accurate for some, but it really is like kind of like hit or miss for a lot of people.  

So I would recommend, you know If anybody is using heart rate to like prescribe their training or even wants to know what their maximum heart rate is do like some sort of test, um to figure that out and I don't necessarily have a great rep  

Ted Ryce: What would you recommend? 

Brady Holmer: That's kind of hard because the best way to do it would be honestly to get a VO2 max test and then during that test you're going to also have a measure of your heart rate and so you'll get your maximum heart rate.  

There are protocols that you can that you can use to find your maximum heart rate. Like you go to a track and you run one lap and then you go faster the next one and the faster the next one and even faster the next one.  

So basically just run yourself progressively to exhaustion. I mean safely, as safely as you can. And if you think you're at a 10 out of 10, this is as hard as I can go, measure your heart rate and that's probably close to it. But I would definitely do something like that versus just 220 minus age because it doesn't really tend to be that accurate. So... 

Ted Ryce: Why not? Is it the size of people's hearts or something different about their cardiovascular system? 

Brady Holmer: Yeah, it's honestly just like there's so much variation in terms of like people's maximum heart rate. I wouldn't necessarily say it has to do with like heart size and it could be heart size, it could be your autonomic nervous system like activities.  

So like for instance for me, I have a really hard time getting my heart rate up. So like I think my maximum, so I'm 30 years old, so if you took 220 minus age my max heart rate theoretically would be somewhere around 190. My actual one is around like 185 ish, 186.  

So I mean it seems like it's very close to 190, minute when you're taking a percentage of that you know can be a pretty significant difference so it's just there could be a number of variations in why that doesn't work for some people maybe some people just can't push themselves to their max but you know it's a formula and some formulas you know a lot of the formulas just aren't going to apply on an individual level to kind of a lot of people. 

Ted Ryce: So okay, so the best way to do it, get a VO2 max test. If not, go to the track and Google max heart rate test. We actually have one that we give to our clients if we feel like they're a candidate for that. 

Brady Holmer: Oh, cool. What's,what's the protocol that you use? 

Ted Ryce: I wrote it down, man. I don't remember. I don't run. I do Brazilian jiu-jitsu and I do a lot of bike or treadmill or elliptical work, which if I have time, I will selfishly ask you about different forms of cardio and what we know about how that might affect.  

Anyway, starting there, what would you recommend then? So doing zone two, let's say so if someone knows their max heart rate is easier to it's easy to figure out right? You just figure out the percentages and stay within that range. But let's say someone isn't gonna run out immediately after listening to this and go do a vo2 max test or even go to the track. What would be the best way to kind of do that? The talk test like you mentioned 

Brady Holmer: to estimate their zone too, you mean? 

Ted Ryce: to get into that, yeah, to get into zone two so that they could run out to the gym and do it right now. Or maybe they're listening on the treadmill right now. 

Brady Holmer: For sure. Yeah, yeah, I think so. There are definitely some subjective ways that you can kind of assess like whether you're in zone two and again, it's like I think we always get caught up in this like oh, there's this like am I in zone two? Like there's this defined threshold that like oh my gosh if i'm you know one beat per minute out of my zone two then it diminishes all the benefits and it's like no like there's kind of like a continuum to this.  

And so it's, you know, zone two, it could be kind of wide. So I think, I think if somebody is going and they're listening on the treadmill right now, or if they want to go to the gym after this and do their quote unquote zone two cardio, you know, thinking your mind one, you know, could I do this for like a couple of hours? Could I maintain this intensity for a couple of hours, whether you're on the bike or you're on the treadmill? If the answer is no, then you're probably not in zone two.  

If you could, if somebody was walking or running onto the treadmill next to you and you could carry on a conversation with them, almost similar to like what you and I are doing now without really like, yeah. And like, you know, if you have to gasp in between words, you're not in zone two, you should be able to carry on like a conversation almost as if like they don't know you're exercising.  

So, like if I'm Sam riding my Peloton in my garage and like my wife calls me, if I'm in zone two, like she should barely even be able to tell that I'm on the Peloton. She should just think I'm like, sitting down on the couch or something like that. So you want it to be barely perceptible. You want to be able to have a conversation during it. So I think those two would be really good, just easy ways. The conversation one is pretty good too. 

Can I carry a conversation? Could I do this for a couple hours? And then just like on a rating of perceived exertion, say like what's my effort out of a 10, you know, you probably want it to be like four, maybe five, something like that for zone two. 

So I think all three of those things in general, like if you could do all of those, then I would say you're probably close to being in zone two if you're in like relatively good shape. And obviously using a lactate meter would be the best thing but most people aren't going to do that and I think that's okay. Most people don't need to test their lactate during exercise. 

Ted Ryce: Yeah, I saw some, I think a commercially available one the other day. I do have a question though, because I've been in this situation where I've been doing cardio and I felt like cardiovascularly I wasn't being challenged, but I was experiencing muscular fatigue in my legs.  

And so it almost felt like locally I was maybe getting, I don't know the physiology to be honest, but like lactate, I know it's not lactate that whatever ends up building up that causes your muscles to burn. But I wasn't being challenged cardiovascularly. I could keep up a conversation. Is any thoughts there or any? 

Brady Holmer: Yeah, I mean, I sometimes experience the same thing. It honestly could just be, you know, bodies are very weird and like things that are happening outside of exercise, like, you know, you're physiological stress due to your job, due to work or family or something like that.  

I think a lot of that can influence our exercise in ways that we don't know. I'm not an expert on fatigue or psychological fatigue and things like that, but I've certainly experienced the same thing where you go out on a run and it's just like, oh my gosh, my legs are just so heavy like they're so fatigued but my heart rate's at like 130 or something like that. 

So I'm not even you know barely breaking a sweat and I just think that it's like maybe you have just some residual fatigue from like maybe you did leg day the day beforehand.  

So a lot of things could be like happening there and sometimes the opposite occurs you know where your body just feels great but for some reason it's like your heart rate's at 180 you're not even going like you know at a power output or speed that would typically give you like a heart rate of 120 or something like that.  

So, I don't know sometimes the body is just weird and you're like I don't know what's going on and you look at your wearable and you can't really glean any insight from that. So, I don't know I probably don't have a good answer for that one without like kind of the overall context around that workout. 

Ted Ryce: Well, I think the takeaway is important. Because you're trying to implement this training modality because it's going to help you with your longevity. But at the same time, you need to keep in mind that your stress levels are important, sleep's important, your hydration status is important, too.  

So I guess the takeaway there would be, hey, if you're having a rough day think about what else might be going on if you're a little under hydrated or, yeah, it didn't sleep that well, maybe take it even a little bit easier and come back and push it harder on another day.  

So let's get into, okay, so zone two, you've talked about the best way to figure that out, get the max heart rate test and stay within the percentages and then use those three measures that you talked about to kind of gauge if you're in zone two, if you don't know your max heart rate.  

How often do we need to do this? Because you brought up Peter Attia. I listened to one guy he had on. The guy was, I forget his name, I think he was a Portuguese guy.  

And he was basically saying like, oh yeah, well, you know, five days a week, do 90 minutes and then go all out at the end of one time one of those five workouts per, it was like five or six workouts per week for 90 minutes, which is fantastic if that's, if you have the type of lifestyle that you can do that and you also enjoy doing that. But man, what is a more reasonable approach to that where you're still getting great results building your VO2 max? 

Brady Holmer: Yeah, I think the guy you're referencing is Inigo Sanmilon, maybe who was on Attia. Yeah, I mean, so I think for him, obviously context is key because he's a coach to Tour de France riders and things like that.  

And similar to Alan Cousin, who I mentioned before, they're both coaches to very, very elite endurance athletes. They're kind of cardio, endurance focused guys. So they're going to recommend seven days a week, do as much endurance exercise as you can and obviously get your strength training in.  

And you know, I sort of had that mindset too. So you know, I'm doing, I mean, I'm, I do endurance seven days a week. I mean, I'm probably doing, you know, between 10 and 14 hours of like combined running and cycling every single week. Still trying to get like my resistance training in, but you know, that's, it's what I do. And I'm training primarily to be good at endurance sports.  

So, you know, that's kind of like my focus. I certainly don't need to, I certainly don't think that most people need to, or should be doing, you know, six days a week, 90 minutes every day. If you have the time and are willing to do that, that's great, but I think there is a point with endurance exercise where there are probably diminishing returns.  

So I think that, you know, most people, I think that three days a week should probably be the minimum that you're going to be doing some sort of like cardiovascular or endurance exercise. 

You know, if you only have two, obviously do it on two days per week, but I do think that there is a frequency component to endurance exercise training where if you do a five hour bike ride on the weekend, you know, you're doing five hours of endurance exercise per week, but I don't think that that's as good as doing say two hours on Monday, two on Wednesday, and two on Friday to get like six hours. I think there's frequency.  

So three days is certainly better than one, even if the volume is kind of matched. And so I think people should at least try to set aside three days per week of some sort of endurance exercise. And I think a good framework for that would be have two of those days be your  “zone two training”.  

Try to get between maybe 45 and like 90 minutes if you can do more, if you can do up to two hours, you know, even better. And then have one day be like a high intensity interval training day where you're getting your heart rate above, well above that zone too. So into quote, what you would say like a zone five or, you know, more commonly just like above 85 to 90% of your maximum heart rate. So. 

Ted Ryce: Ready to throw up. 

Brady Holmer: Yes, exactly. Exactly. Maybe a throw up, like maybe do that like once a month. I don't think you need to be doing that every single week, but that's just my opinion. But if you, if you kind of like to torture yourself like that, that's, that's completely fine. 

Ted Ryce: When I used to do kickboxing, we would spar. And this is when I was in my teeds. And it would elicit some vomiting, probably zone-fiving it. So let me ask you this, Brady. 

When it comes to, okay, so three days a week, two, not great, but three, okay, 60 to 90 minutes, even two hours is better, could you split that up in the day and still get the same results? Could I do two, one hour or two 45 minute sessions and still get the same results? 

Yeah, I think, I think similar results. So I think that there's, you know, I think that at least once a week, probably, or, you know, it's probably good to have a one session that is like much longer than you normally do.  

So breaking up everyone, like having everyone being below an hour probably isn't great. I would say at least one day say like I'm going to do 90 minutes to two hours of endurance exercise because I think there are certain adaptations whether they're for cardiovascular health or like you know your metabolic health, your mitochondria that can only occur if you're doing two hours all at once. You know there's a certain stress that your body gets.  

Ted Ryce: Wow. It's two hours is what you're saying. Like two hours is. 

Brady Homer: Let's say 90 minutes to two hours. And obviously you work up to that. You know, if you're,  

Ted Ryce: Well, you're saying two hours is better.  

Brady Holmer: Well, two hours is probably better than 90 minutes, of course, but, but some people don't have,  

Ted Ryce: What about three hours?  

Brady Holmer: well, probably even better.  

Ted Ryce: Are you serious? For your mitochondrial health? 

Brady Holmer: I would say if you have three hours to do zone two, I mean just once per week, I think yeah, that would be good. 

Ted Ryce: Man, I would, I feel, I, thinking about that, it's like, yeah, I would live a long time, but I wouldn't have much going on in my life. 

Brady Holmer: Yeah, and granted, you know, I say that meaning I rarely do kind of a session that's three hours. I'm kind of like between two and a half for my real long stuff. You know, maybe eventually if I train for like a longer race or something, I'll do three hours.  

But you know, I'm doing a lot during the week, but most of my sessions are 60, kind of to 90 minutes.  

But going back to your question of whether you can split it up. I certainly think you can. So, oh, I don't have two hours in the morning, but I have an hour in the morning before work and I can fit in 45 minutes or an hour in the evening.  

I think that that's great. There's also some cool, some evidence that like splitting it up could even have like some unique benefits versus doing it all at once. So, you know, you could go. 

Theoretically, you know, if that was the goal to go harder in both sessions, you know, you can't, you can go hard in one hour and hard in the next hour versus two hours, you might not be able to like push yourself. Cause you have that recovery period in between. I think it's also though interesting.  

So when we talk about like breaking it up, they're have been some recent really interesting studies on what they're calling like exercise snacks. So they do people, they never do kind of like even 30 minutes of cardiovascular exercise at one time, but during the day they're doing like five sets of like one minute sprints or something like that.  

So say for example, like I'm just working out my desk during the day Okay, I'm gonna go down to my stationary bike I'm gonna like sprint my ass off for like one to two minutes and then I'm gonna come back upstairs and I'm gonna go do That like ten times throughout the day they actually show that can increase people's VO2 max and other kind of aspects of like their metabolic and their cardiovascular health, granted I think again your baseline fitness matters so these people may not have been as like fit as maybe below average fitness. 

But nonetheless, I think it just shows that sometimes it's just about getting the work in, even if you get it in bouts of 10 minutes you know, throughout the day.and that's actually something I've changed my mind on in probably the last five to 10 years, maybe more like five years, but I used to think like, Oh, you have to do at least an hour at a time or it's useless.  

Now I think that it's like, if you only have 10 minutes to do something, do it and maybe you can do three or four of those kind of 10 minute exercise balance during the day. It's still good. 

Ted Ryce: Yeah, thanks for saying that because certainly the people who listen to the show there's gonna the vast majority I would imagine at least from the emails I've gotten in the people I've talked to and the clients I've worked with from the podcast, they don't have that time the two or two to three hours So so appreciate you mentioning that.  

I want to talk a little bit about the high-intensity interval session and for me, my high intensity interval session is jujitsu. My goal right now, I want to get a brown belt with two stripes. I just have to get my black belt.  

And it's so exhausting. And I want to say this too. Back in the day, let's say 10 to 15 years ago, we were all about high intensity interval training. And I know you're probably like 15 to 20 years old then, right? 

But when Tabata's came out, it was like, hey, you don't need to do this steady state stuff. And there were a lot of myths about steady state cardio, it increases cortisol so much and it eats up your, you know, all the nonsense people said. And I probably said a bit of that too.  

And then I ran into, I would only do high intensity interval training or lift weights. And then I would do jujitsu, which is also high intensity interval training. It's five minute rounds, sometimes five minute rounds with one minute rest in between and you're like five tough guys, you know, that you're rolling with.  

So you got 25 minutes of intervals of, with, you know, interspersed with one minute rest and I hit a wall. I felt, I got really old in my early thirties and it was a guy, Joel Jameson, who kind of help turn me around on this. Don't know if you're familiar with Joel. I don't think he's really on Twitter, but. 

Brady Holmer: Not familiar with him. 

Ted Ryce: Anyway, he was saying, listen, the issue is when you're doing high intensity, you develop, there's different things that get developed. For example, high intensity, you start developing more of the enzymes that can deal with the buildup of hydrogen, with hydrogen ions causing the problem, right?  

Where you're feeling that muscle burning, versus doing steady state cardio, where your blood is in this let's say smooth circulation, it's not getting stuck in your muscles, pooling in your muscles, it's getting into circulation in that venous return.  

So for those of you listening, arteries take blood away from your body veins, bring it back in that venous return helps, probably gonna get this wrong, but I believe the left ventricle start to get that eccentric hypertrophy. And so you get higher stroke volume and all this stuff. 

And when I started doing the zone two cardio, it really made a difference in the higher intensity stuff. So I'm saying that because there's some people still trapped in the high..., just do high intensity exercise. Do you have anything to add there? 

Brady Holmer: Yeah, I think there's always like when the discussions come to like should you do HIIT, should you do zone 2 cardio, it's like obviously you should do a little bit of both.  

And I think my opinion sometimes differs from that of other people on this topic, but I'm like I think the more time you have during the week to like dedicate to endurance exercise, the I think more kind of zone 2 that you should probably integrate, but you know going back to like you and I chatting about the person who say, maybe they only have two days per week to do aerobic exercise and maybe they only have 45 minutes a day.  

I honestly would probably tell that person to do high intensity or high-ish intensity training for both of those sessions.  

Don't waste your time with zone two cardio. And I know some people might disagree with that, but it's like, if you're really trying to improve the strength of your heart and your heart health and you only have two dedicated sessions of 45 minutes to do that, do high intensity intervals and get your heart rate up and kind of maximize the time spent during that aerobic exercise and maybe you don't do official zone two cardio but like you're going to be walking during the week so try to go on like a few walks or something like that but I think for those like two dedicated sessions do high intensity training.  

So like if you only have two hours or less during the week I think you should be doing a little bit more intense than zone two and that's just my opinion if you really want to kind of maximize the cardiovascular benefits there.  

But again if you have three days per week then you know and maybe you know two to three hours then that additional hour you know make it like zone two or something a little bit less intense something more like steady state. 

Ted Ryce: Interesting. So the intervals that I do, I typically don't have time for intervals outside of the jujitsu training right now. It just takes so much out of me. But I got, I looked, I saw some research on biking intervals. And they compared in this one study, and this is by no means my area of expertise.  

I'm really curious to hear your thoughts on this. But they were comparing the VO2 max results from three different protocols. There were four four-minute intervals, so an interval of four minutes times four.  

And then there was four eight-minute intervals, and then there was four 16-minute intervals. And what I love about research is you might, if you would have asked me, and probably most people, maybe you would answer differently, Brady, but if you would ask me what do you think would improve VO2 max more? I would say, well, four by 16, because you're just doing a lot more.  

You're doing 16 minutes, like a lot of time. But it turned out that the four times eight led to a better effect size when it came to improving VO2 max compared to the four minute intervals, which were probably more intense, right? 

Brady Holmer: Yeah, I was gonna say, do you know, was the, so yeah, the intensity wasn't the same for all those intervals. It was probably a little bit more intense with the four minute, a little bit less intense with the eight, and then even more with like the 16 probably? 

Ted Ryce: Hmm You know what I'm thinking we should we should go back and forth and maybe have you back on this show to discuss that a little bit I would I would like to do that but what we can do now, I think is just what are some of the intervals that someone listening right now could do. Since you're saying hey, you got two hours of cardio time go do some intervals. So what would you recommend? 

Brady Holmer: Yeah, so there's actually a study and I talk about like the result of this one in my book which I think is very interesting.  

So they compared four different training regimens and these were all kind of like volume matched, or I guess not maybe volume matched but like matched for energy expenditure I guess. Is typically how they do it in studies because it's like if you do one exercise about that's you want to make sure that you know the people if they expend the same amount of energy then it's like your body's doing the same amount of work.  

So that 20 minute one's more intense the hour one's less intense you kind of quote unquote burn you know the same amount of calories during that or so they're their energy equated so in this study they compared four different protocols one was just like a long slow distance run. So kind of just say like think of it as your zone two cardio.  

One was a run at like their lactate threshold so not quite like a zone five but you still pretty hard but like I think that was for 25 minutes so 25 minute lactate threshold run.  

And then they did two interval protocols so one was a 15 second on 15 second off so 15 seconds pretty much as hard as you can go 15 second rest so kind of like Tabata but Tabata is 2010 so a little bit different than that and then a 4x4 so four intervals four minutes long protocol so they compared all those 

The most effective ones were the 4x4 minute and the 15 second 15 off and then those were more effective than the long slow distance one or the lactate threshold for improving VO2 max.  

So I think those improved it by like 6-8% whereas the long slow distance, no change, the lactate threshold one was like a 2-3% change or something like that.  

So I think if people wanted two different protocols to use, something very simple to kind of having your repertoire would be the 4x4 one. I think that's a very, that's used in a lot of studies. I've been a part of research studies that use that protocol too. That's like a classic one. Just do a 10 minute warmup, go hard for four minutes, go easy for four minutes, repeat it four times, and then do a 10 minute cool down. 

Very easy protocol, very effective protocol. During those four minutes though, you've got to be going hard, like 90-95% of your maximum heart rate.  

So I think that's a great protocol because you're getting those long intervals in. A 15 second one would also be good if you're really just looking to like quick burner of a workout.  

Like I'm going to go as hard as I can, 15 on, 15 seconds off. I think those would be two good protocols. Again, that one's going to be like the Tabata one. So I think a classic Tabata is you do the 15 on, 15 off, you do it eight times. 

And then you can do multiple sets of that if you'd like or if you can. But I think those two protocols would be great for people to start out with. It really doesn't have to be that complicated and they're two easy ones. One's a little bit more intense but a lot shorter.  

One's a little bit more prolonged intervals. But both seem to be equally beneficial, at least in terms of speaking of improving your VO2 max.  

Ted Ryce: I'm going to ask you, I know we're coming up on an hour here, but I want to ask one more selfish question. And I know some other people out there might be interested. So if I was going to, so VO2 max, if I wanted to, let's say improve, let's say someone is wanting to improve their jujitsu performance, would it be VO2 max that you would want to focus on to do that or would it be some other type of measure? 

And of course, you know, I'm joking, obviously I'm interested in this for myself, but if someone else is doing some type of mixed sport where they're performing at, you know, maxing out their heart rate or getting at like maybe soccer or something like that, how would they, would it be VO2 max training that would, they'd wanna focus on or something else? 

Brady Holmer: Yeah, I think to be honest,there obviously is a lot of focus on view to max training because as we just kind of like talked about, and earlier in the podcast like it's very important for longevity. It's very important for endurance performance, but I think for a lot of just performance.  

And even if you're a runner trying to improve your performance, sometimes focusing on VO2 max isn't necessarily the best thing to do in something like jujitsu or soccer like you said. I think that those people might want to focus on something else because there are like a few key determinants of like I speak about this from an endurance performance perspective, but you can think about it from jujitsu perspective or a soccer perspective.  

So your view of 2 max is obviously important. So you can think of that as your ceiling. If you raise your ceiling, kind of everything below that is going to be kind of elevated a little bit more. So you know, your 7 out of 10 becomes a, your 7 out of 10 effort becomes, or your pace out of 7 out of 10 becomes a 5 out of 10. So everything kind of gets easier relatively if you increase your view of 2 max, because your ceiling is bigger engine.  

But when it comes to like performance and looking at like who performs better and this probably applies to sports probably even more so applies to sports like jiu jitsu or soccer where you kind of have these intermittent bursts of like high intensity activity.  

I don't necessarily think like the guy with a view to max the highest view to max is always going to perform the best. So things like your lactate threshold are going to be super important.  

So your body's ability to just convert lactate or recycle it into you know ATP and energy or clear out lactate that's being produced during exercise is super important because you don't want the lactate and like you mentioned the hydrogen ions building up which eventually will contribute to fatigue. Lactate threshold is super important.  

Things like your efficiency, so we could generally just refer to that as like your movement efficiency or your economy of movement. 

So, like running, you know it's like how much oxygen are you using at a given pace efficient just like a car. So focusing on those are better and the way that you improve those is not necessarily through VO2 max training, it would be through you know kind of like lactate threshold training or sport specific training.  

So, I wouldn't necessarily say like just do VO2 max training, that's all that matters, increase your VO2 max. There are definitely aspects of performance that are unrelated to VO2 Max and you can improve your performance without improving your VO2 Max.  

So if you're doing Jiu Jitsu, you're trying to improve just your endurance during Jiu Jitsu, your ability to handle the bouts without fatiguing as much, you're probably going to focus more on muscular endurance and your threshold work compared to just how high can I get my VO2 Max.  

I think about this as well because like as I mentioned before, I mean I have a foot in fairly high VO2 max, I don't think if I want to become a faster runner, improving my VO2 max from say 74 to 78, it's probably not going to make me much faster. What's going to make me faster is probably doing some strength training to improve my running economy, probably doing some lactate threshold training to improve that aspect of my performance. So find your weakness and maybe somebody who already has a high VO2 max, or a high ish VO2 max, maybe that's not what's kind of limiting your performance. It could be like these other aspects. 

And so, you know, find your weakness and then kind of focus on that in training. So that was a long winded answer to your question, but I would say no, VO2 max training isn't always the thing that you want to focus on. 

Ted Ryce: Yeah, thanks, Brady, and appreciate that. So what I took away it's like we really have to look at the time that we have and what our priorities are.  

And if your priority is longevity, then we're talking about You know, we're talking about vo2 max and then if you have limited time then you need to choose the best training methods to Build and maintain that.  

And so lactate threshold training as you mentioned in that study where it compared the long slow distance, the 25 minute lactate run, and then the four by four intervals, you know, it really, the four by four did a lot better. So we really have to understand what it is we're really after and make sure that we're dialed in for that and make sure that we're also willing to give up something in the process if that ends up being part of what we have to do. Yeah. 

Brady Holmer: Yeah, absolutely. I think that's an important point. Just like everybody is, is most people are, you know, unless you're a professional athlete, you're like time limited. So we only have so many days that we're willing to devote to resistance training. So many days that you're willing to vote to endurance training. So it's like for most people kind of like... 

You know, just focus on, I get, you know, first what your weakness is, you know, are you lacking in the endurance department? Are you lacking in the strength department? That should probably be your main focus, but it's just like, you know, prioritize kind of what, what makes sense for you to prioritize.  

And if longevity is your goal, then there are certain ways to attack things. If, if looking good and aesthetics are your goal, there's definitely a different way to attack things,as well.  

But, and I think, you know, one more point, maybe is just people need to think about enjoyment as well. You know, you, I don't necessarily, I'm not a huge fan of strength training, but I know it's important. So I make sure to get it in, but it's just like, you know, I'm probably never going to stop doing all the endurance training that I do just because it like makes me feel good.  

Just probably like, you know, being in the gym for a couple of hours and just strength training feels good to you, even though I know you do both. So, you know, do what you enjoy obviously, but you know, don't neglect,don't neglect resistance or strength training either. 

Ted Ryce: Yeah, you got to enjoy life, right? You don't want to end up living for a long time and having a life that you wish you maybe would have been shorter, given your choices on how you spent your time. Just kind of joking there, but Brady, hey, it was real pleasure connecting with you on the podcast. 

I would like to have you back on and maybe get some questions from people who listened to the episode, or maybe even from Twitter as well and dive into a few more things. And maybe I can give you that study that we talked about with the four by four, four by eight, four by 16. And yeah, it would be a lot of fun. 

Brady Holmer: Yeah, it would. And I think it would also be fun, especially to talk about, I think one of the bigger things is like in another hot topic now is just like aging and how that affects like muscle strength and you know, how VO2 max changes with aging. I think that's a very interesting kind of area. Just aging in general, but like. 

As more studies seem to come out, it's like you have these intense, extreme athletes who seem to be doing incredible things in old age.  

So I think that can be a neat conversation to do in our round too. But yeah, I'd definitely be open to answering some questions, whatever you want to do for a second one. 

Ted Ryce: Yeah, I would love, absolutely, about the aging and the role VO2 Max plays and all that longevity stuff is really important. And if you're listening right now and you just wanna dive in, make sure you go to Amazon and look up VO2 Max Essentials, the comprehensive guide to aerobic fitness, how to improve it, and what it means for health performance and longevity by Brady Homer . 

Brady, thanks so much for coming on. Where else would you like people to connect with you? 

Brady Holmer: So Twitter is probably where I'm most active and willing to interact. So you can follow me @b_holmer. So that's H O L M E R. That's probably the best way to connect. I don't really post much on Instagram or anything, but,I also do write a column or a, I guess, two weekly blog posts, probably more posting some other content on Substack. So if you go to Bradyholmer.substack.com, you can find information on that.  

I send out a weekly newsletter on Friday. That's free. I also do some premium content on there on Mondays and Wednesdays, little long form stuff similar to the topics in my book, health, longevity, nutrition, all things like that. So if people want to check that out, that's where you can find me. 

Ted Ryce: Great. Well, really appreciate it. We'll have all those links on the show notes for this episode. Definitely give the book a look if you're interested in diving deeper into, you know, how to build your VO two max and aerobic fitness in general.  

And Brady, let's do around too soon, man. Really enjoyed it. It was great to connect with you. You never know how on a, on a platform like Twitter where people don't typically post videos how it's gonna go, but really, really enjoy connecting with you and speaking with you today. Really appreciate it. 

Brady Holmer: No, it's been great, Ted. I think I appreciate you having me on and your willingness to share kind of what I have to say with your audience. Hopefully they found it interesting as well. And yeah, I'm happy to do a round two anytime you'd like. 

Ted Ryce: Great, let's set it up. 

Brady Holmer: Cool, let's do it.