How & Why to Strengthen Your Heart & Cardiovascular Fitness

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Summary

In this episode, I discuss the critical importance of building a strong heart and how to do it. I explain why the human body needs to breathe, the importance of cardiorespiratory fitness for sleep and exercise recovery, and its long-term implications for physical health, disease risk, and mortality. I explain how the heart functions, what determines heart rate, why the heart never gets sore, and the unique advantages of cardiac muscle over other muscle types.

I explain how to use the ‘Three I’s’ (investigate, interpret, intervene) to assess and improve your cardiovascular fitness. I explain what VO2 max is (and other related metrics, e.g., heart rate variability), describe ranges based on age and elite performance, and discuss exercise regimens to improve VO2 max.

Listeners of this episode will understand why cardiovascular health is vital for performance and overall health and learn a series of actionable tools to improve their cardiovascular fitness.

Journal Articles

• Physical Fitness and All-Cause Mortality: A Prospective Study of Healthy Men and Women (JAMA Network)
• Association of Cardiorespiratory Fitness With Long-term Mortality Among Adults Undergoing Exercise Treadmill Testing (JAMA Network Open)
• Cardiorespiratory Fitness and Mortality Risk Across the Spectra of Age, Race, and Sex (Journal of the American College of Cardiology)
• Heart rate variability in the prediction of mortality: A systematic review and meta-analysis of healthy and patient populations (Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews)
• First Evaluation of an Index of Low Vagally-Mediated Heart Rate Variability as a Marker of Health Risks in Human Adults: Proof of Concept (MDPI)
• Predicting stress in first-year college students using sleep data from wearable devices (PLOS Digital Health)
• The Importance of Respiratory Rate Monitoring: From Healthcare to Sport and Exercise (MDPI)
• Respiratory function in healthy long-term meditators: A cross-sectional comparative study (Heliyon)
• Performance Enhancement: What Are the Physiological Limits? (Physiology)
• New records in aerobic power among octogenarian lifelong endurance athletes (Journal of Applied Physiology)
• Case Studies in Physiology: Temporal changes in determinants of aerobic performance in individual going from alpine skier to world junior champion time trial cyclist (Journal of Applied Physiology)
• The Physiology of the World Record Holder for the Women’s Marathon (International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching)

Other Resources

• Interpreting V02 max numbers

People Mentioned

• Jonathan Myers: clinical professor, Stanford University
• Steven Blair: professor of exercise science, University of South Carolina
• Miguel Induráin: Spanish cyclist
• Peter Attia: physician, author, longevity medicine
• Oskar Svendsen: Norwegian cyclist
• Michael Joiner: exercise physiologist, Mayo Clinic
• Paula Radcliffe: British long-distance runner
• Andrew Jones: professor of applied physiology, University of Exeter
• Joel Jamieson: endurance physiology expert, author