KNOWING YOUR ENERGY ZONES

Understanding when to push and when not to push

- MARK McCADDEN

FIRST, the good news. Your Fitter Happier correspondent is in the highest tier when it comes to fitness and longevity. And comfortably so.

A maiden VO2 Max test and a score of 50.8, at the age of 47, and we are chuffed as we wipe away the sweat after almost 15 minutes on a treadmill, with pace and incline going up every 60 seconds.

Then it's off to Sean Kinane from myhealth-matters.ie's office for a breakdown of our results, and how we can optimise our training.

So what is VO2?

Seasn explains: "VO2 is the amount of oxygen you consume in millilitres per kilogram of body mass, averaged over one minute.

"Your peak score is 50.8. If we categorise it, you are 47 years old. In order for you to be classed as superior, you need to get over 48.1, so we class your fitness as superior."

And then the caveat.

"Having a superior VO2 doesn't guarantee anything in regards to performance, it guarantees potential," says Sean.

"If we train you the right way and we get you to use that VO2, you are going to train a lot better. But as a health metric, there is no other known metric to predict longevity as accurately as VO2.

So, how do we utilise this information? A test with Sean offers more than just one number. He opens his laptop and suddenly an array of charts and figures appear.

"We help everybody from any sport to produce better performances," he says. "That comes to play by understanding energy systems and understanding when to push and when not to push.