


It is the maximum volume of oxygen that your body is capable of consuming and converting to energy for your working muscles. Your VO2 at this stage of maximal exertion is called your maximal oxygen consumption ( VO2max). you cannot work any harder than you already are). If you continue to increase your exercise intensity you will eventually reach a point of maximal exertion (i.e. VO2maxĭuring aerobic/endurance exercise, as your exercise intensity increases, so does your VO2. This is the reason that your breathing gets progressively faster and deeper as your exercise intensity increases, your body is trying to provide more oxygen to your working muscles so that they can generate enough ATP energy to keep you moving. Therefore, increased exercise intensity ultimately corresponds to an increased VO2. Since the ATP energy used by your muscles is generated with the aid of oxygen, it follows that an increase in exercise intensity will result in an increase in muscular oxygen demands. When you exercise your muscles are working harder than normal and, as a result, they require more energy than normal. The byproducts of this cellular respiration chemical reaction are water and carbon dioxide, that's why we are said to breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide. Once oxygen has been delivered to your muscle cells it is used in the cellular respiration chemical reaction to produce ATP energy. Delivery of oxygen to your cells requires pulmonary (or lung) ventilation to bring the oxygen into your body, diffusion of the oxygen from the air in your lungs into the blood in the capillaries that surround them, cardiac (or heart) contraction to pump the blood through your body to your muscles, and diffusion of the oxygen from your blood into your muscle cells. Before your cells can use oxygen to generate ATP, the oxygen must first be delivered to your cells. To actually consume the oxygen you've inhaled your body needs to make use of it in the cellular respiration process that generates ATP. If you consumed all of the oxygen that you breathed in you would expect to find that the amount of oxygen in the air that you breathed out would be 0%, but it is typically in the 15% to 18% range, depending on what you are doing and a number of other factors. The amount of oxygen in the air that you breathe in is approximately 20.95% by volume (the other major components of air are nitrogen, argon, and carbon dioxide at 78.08%, 0.93%, and 0.03% by volume respectively). So how does your body "consume" oxygen? Breathing in is only the first step in oxygen consumption and, in fact, not all of the oxygen you breathe in gets consumed. The O2 in VO2 is the chemical formula for oxygen in its most stable form, the form that is found in the air we breathe. The V in VO2 stands for volume, and in fact it is usually displayed in technical texts with a dot above it to indicate that it represents not just a volume, but a volume rate (i.e. You can read more about ATP in the Exercise Energy Systems article, but for the purposes of this article all you really need to know is that ATP fuels your muscles during exercise and your muscle cells need oxygen during aerobic endurance exercise to generate ATP. cardiorespiratory) exercise the primary method of ATP generation requires oxygen. Note: During exercise, ATP can be generated without oxygen, but only for short periods of time. Therefore, by definition, a VO2max measurement is ultimately a measure of your cardiorespiratory fitness level. VO2 and VO2max are important in the context of exercise, because they are a measure of your body's ability to generate ATP, and ATP is the energy source that allows your muscles to continue working while you are exercising. VO2max (or maximal oxygen consumption) is simply the maximum possible VO2 that a given person can achieve. VO2 (or oxygen consumption) is a measure of the volume of oxygen that is used by your body to convert the energy from the food you eat into the energy molecules, called adenosine triphosphate ( ATP), that your body uses at the cellular level. Fat Versus Carbohydrate Utilization During Exercise Calculator.Heart Rate and Percent VO2max Conversion Calculator.


One Repetition Maximum ( 1RM) Calculator.Resting Metabolic Rate ( RMR) Calculator.Net Versus Gross Calorie Burn Conversion Calculator.Heart Rate Based Calorie Burn Calculator.
