Fitness is more than a feeling. With the right tools it can be easily measured, and with the right perspective it can be easily managed. When health professionals talk about fitness, they are typically thinking in terms of cardiorespiratory fitness, which is measured in terms of VO2 max.

VO2 max is a single number that describes your cardiorespiratory fitness. It tracks the maximum amount of oxygen your body can utilize in a single minute of intense exercise. This information is essential for understanding your ability to fuel activity by using your aerobic energy pathways. In other words, the higher your VO2 max, the more oxygen you can import, transport and utilize to aerobically transform the energy stored in nutrients into performance.

Thinking about your fitness in terms of VO2 max — a vital health metric that is estimated by your Garmin device — has many advantages. These include knowing when you are fit enough to enjoy health benefits and when a lack of regular activity could be putting your well-being at risk.

Understand and Improve Your VO2 Max

When it comes to understanding what your VO2 max means, higher is usually better. What a good level is for you depends on factors such as age and gender. This is because of normal differences in body composition (fat versus muscles, bones and organs) and the fact that our ability to utilize oxygen typically declines as we get older.

How Garmin Estimates Your VO2 Max

Select Garmin devices automatically estimate your VO2 max each time you record a run or brisk walk with heart rate and GPS tracking activated. Over the course of your activity, the Firstbeat Analytics engine built into your device examines the relationship between how fast you’re moving and how hard your body is working to maintain that pace.

A few Garmin devices without built-in GPS are able to estimate your VO2 max using accelerometer data, by utilizing location from a paired smartphone or for cycling computers, based on GPS and power data.