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LIVING FIT & WELL Assessing And Improving Cardiovascular Fitness
LIVING FIT & WELL Assessing And Improving Cardiovascular Fitness
By Mark Nemish
Ionce again want to discuss the importance of being fit, especially in your middle and later years in relation to longevity and delaying all-cause mortality disease states such as cardiovascular disease and Type 2 diabetes.
It’s never too late to improve your fitness level and it’s never too late to accomplish that goal. Improvement begins with a mindset of aspiring to improve your fitness. Far too often I see people of all ages who are active in the gym but have no sense of accomplishment. They do the same workouts day in day out and with no method of progression.
In order to achieve improved cardiovascular fitness, first accurately assess your current fitness level to form a basis of self-comparison and a baseline from which to set goals.
There are many methods of assessing fitness levels: running tests like the 2-mile Cooper Test, beep tests, step tests, and sub-maximal treadmill/bike tests. All are fine and can provide some estimate of aerobic capacity or VO2max, but unfortunately, they also can be inaccurate.
A true VO2max test, which uses gas exchange, is much more accurate. However, it requires an all-out effort and is very difficult to perform for most individuals, especially the elderly or unfit.
I prefer to assess aerobic capacity through a very small pinprick of blood to assess the level of lactate accumulating in circulation when exercising.
Through a step-wise, short series of five-minute bouts of exercise, these lactate concentration tests allow me to evaluate one’s fitness at the cellular level. In addition, the tests do not take much time, are very accurate, and easy for the exercising individual to perform.
Equating certain blood lactate levels with the speed on a treadmill or watts (power) on a bike in conjunction with associated heart rate data will give a very nice picture of an individual’s current fitness level. The higher the intensity one can achieve (speed or power) associated with lower lactate levels, the better the aerobic capacity.
There are many researchers in the aging field who identify metabolic disfunction at the cellular level as the genesis of poor health conditions. More specifically, mitochondrial dysfunction due to over-nutrition and a sedentary lifestyle has been identified as a key component.
If you remember back to Biology 101, your mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell, the site where energy (ATP) is generated. Without getting too far down the rabbit hole, mitochondrial dysfunction can result in greater oxidative stress, which can exacerbate a whole host of all-cause mortality disease states.
Great functioning and abundant mitochondria in muscle are a function of higher fitness levels. Since mitochondria consume lactate as a fuel, the fitter individual is one who has less lactate accumulation in circulation when running at higher speeds or pedaling at higher watts.
As a result, testing your lactate in response to specific training intensities is a vast way of assessing mitochondrial function and thus overall health.
Training with low-moderate intensity and long duration and/or high intensity interval training (HIIT) protocols improve your function significantly. Size and number of mitochondria is something I will outline in depth in the next issue.
Mark Nemish is currently the owner/director of Precision Health Performance, dedicated to optimizing the health and fitness of people in need of lifestyle change. He’s the long-time head strength and conditioning coach for the Washington Capitals (2007-23) and Nashville Predators (1998-04) in the NHL.
