Hybrid Athletes - Why your VO2 Max is not important.

Hybrids - Why your VO2 Max is not important.

VO2 Max is a measure of everything to do with your endurance performance, but this measure will take into account things that you haven’t actually thought about that might skew the data in the wrong way in your eyes.

For example - on paper, if you reduce your bodyweight, your VO2 increases. But does this then have a negative impact on other aspects of your running? Like time to exhaustion, decreased power/less glycogen storage, plus impacting non running endurance like metcons?

Or - if you improve your running economy over time - it’s likely that you’ll see your VO2 measurement decrease - because you’re not having to work as hard for your running now.

Your overall Velocity at VO2 Max might have increased - but if you didn’t understand why, you’d be scratching your head thinking that you were underperforming for some reason or not training hard enough.

It’s really Velocity at VO2 Max that is a great indicator of overall performance - genetics can play a role in VO2 so some individuals will have a naturally high measurement, which might also make them think they are “healthy” - but the reality might be different when the Velocity (or running speed) is also taken into account.

If you look at different types of Hybrid Athletes, and the kind of competitions that they compete in - there’s also very little cause to allot much time to increase VO2.

Hyrox and Crossfit athletes main limiting factors are their ability to shuttle blood to the working muscle efficiently. The problem for more strength based hybrids is their inability to then resupply that working muscle with enough oxygen to keep performing the exercise without stopping. This is doubly hard for strength based athletes as they contract muscle mass much harder than endurance athletes when performing exercise, without as much relaxation in-between contractions to allow the resupply of oxygenated blood.

This is the limiting factor that needs training, rather than focusing on measurements like VO2 Max.