VO2 Max
Your fitness tracker can estimate your VO2 max. But at Marylebone Health, we can measure it.
Our VO2 max test in London is just one part of cardiopulmonary exercise testing (CPET) to assess how effectively your heart, lungs and muscles work together as exercise intensity increases.
Conducted in our specialist Harley Street exercise physiology lab, your assessment will provide a fascinating insight into your cardiovascular fitness, helping you understand your current capacity and make more informed decisions about your health, longevity and performance.
What Does Your VO2 Max Tell You?
VO2 max is the measure of the maximum amount of oxygen your body can take in, transport and use during intense exercise. Usually expressed as millilitres of oxygen per kilogram of body weight per minute (ml/kg/min), it is widely used by health professionals and those within the fitness industry as an objective means of calculating an individual’s cardiorespiratory fitness.
A clinical VO2 max test goes beyond estimates based on heart rate, pace or wearable data. At Marylebone Health, we use CPET to measure your respiratory gases as you exercise, while assessing how your cardiovascular and respiratory systems respond as intensity increases. The result provides a detailed picture of your aerobic capacity and your wider physiological performance.
Service in Detail
VO2 max calculations form part of our comprehensive heart and lung stress testing. Alongside maximum oxygen consumption, this assessment can provide valuable information about your lactate/ventilatory threshold, respiratory compensation point, aerobic power output and heart-rate response during exercise.
This creates a much richer picture than a VO2 max score alone. Whether you are interested in learning how to slow down the ageing process, preparing for a sporting challenge, returning to fitness or simply want more precise information about your body, your results can be used to establish a meaningful baseline and inform your next steps.
Step 1: Understanding Your Health and Goals
Your assessment begins before you start exercising. Our specialist team considers your health, medical and exercise background, and will talk to you about what you want to learn from your test.
You don’t need to be an athlete to benefit from a VO2 max test. We work with people across the health and fitness spectrum, from those beginning a new exercise programme to experienced athletes, people preparing for demanding physical challenges, clients monitoring their own recovery.
This initial discussion helps us select an appropriate testing protocol and, importantly, gives us some context to the numbers we collect. A VO2 max score is highly individual, so understanding the person behind the result is an essential part of providing genuinely meaningful insight.
Step 2: Completing Your VO2 Max Test
During your VO2 max test at our human performance clinic in London, you will complete progressively more demanding exercise using a treadmill or cycle ergometer.
You will wear a specialist mask that enables breath-by-breath metabolic gas analysis, measuring the oxygen you inhale and the carbon dioxide you exhale. You can also opt to expand the test to see your heart’s response which can be monitored using a 12-lead ECG.
Exercise intensity gradually increases towards your personal maximum, allowing our team to observe how your cardiovascular and respiratory systems respond to the increasing demand that’s being placed on your system. The incremental period typically involves around 8–10 minutes of progressively harder exercise.
Rather than relying on an algorithm or a prediction, this controlled laboratory assessment directly measures the physiological responses used to establish your VO2 max.
Step 3: Analysing Your Results
Following your assessment, our team will interpret your results in the context of your health, fitness and personal objectives. Your data can provide insight into your VO2 max, ventilatory thresholds, aerobic power and cardiovascular response to exercise.
These findings can then be used to establish more personalised exercise plans and training zones, giving you objective information to create a more effective fitness programme. For clients who are focused on improving their long-term health, VO2 max testing also provides a valuable baseline that can be revisited in the future to monitor changes in their cardiorespiratory fitness.
VO2 Max and Healthy Ageing
Staying fit and healthy as you get older is not simply about living longer; it’s about maintaining the physical capacity to keep doing the things you enjoy. VO2 max provides an objective measure of cardiorespiratory fitness and can offer useful insight into how efficiently your body responds to physical demand.
VO2 max naturally tends to decline with age, but regular exercise and an appropriate training regime can help preserve and improve aerobic fitness. Establishing your current VO2 max gives you a measurable baseline rather than simply relying on how fit you feel.
At Marylebone Health, we can use your results to identify personalised exercise intensities and help you take a more informed, proactive approach to maintaining your fitness, independence, and quality of life over the years ahead.
Laboratory services begin at £175 per hour up to £585 for a full clinical assessment and report with one of our Leading Performance Science experts.
Why Choose Marylebone Health?
VO2 max testing is most valuable when the measurement is accurate, and the data is interpreted by people who understand its wider clinical and performance context.
At Marylebone Health, testing takes place within our specialist exercise physiology facilities on Harley Street and is led by an experienced team working across health, medicine and human performance. Our specialists provide CPET testing for a broad spectrum of clients, from people focused on preventative health and longevity to post-operative patients and elite athletes.
Because we have multidisciplinary expertise, your results will never be viewed in isolation – they will become part of a more informed, personalised approach to understanding and improving your health.
Laboratory services begin at £200 per hour up to £599 for a full clinical assessment and report with one of our Leading Performance Science experts. For those unable to complete a full exercise test we are able to estimate V02 max using Seismofit for a passive measurement.
For bookings, prices and information please contact us on 0207 637 7677 or email info@marylebonehealthgroup.com
VO2 Max FAQs
There is no single VO2 max score that is considered “good” for everyone. Results will always vary according to age, sex, genetics, fitness and training history. This is why getting a professional to interpret your results is so valuable; rather than focusing solely on a generic target, your result can be considered in the context of your own unique profile and your individual health and performance goals. Discover what makes a ‘good’ VO2 max.
VO2 max is typically expressed in millilitres of oxygen consumed per kilogram of body weight per minute (ml/kg/min). During laboratory testing, the gases you breathe in and out are analysed while exercise intensity progressively increases. This allows oxygen consumption to be directly measured rather than simply estimated from your heart rate, running pace, or other indirect data. Find out more about VO2 max calculations.
VO2 max testing is not just for elite athletes. It can provide useful insight for anyone who wants to better understand their cardiovascular fitness, optimise their exercise programme, prepare for a fitness challenge or monitor health improvements over time. Marylebone Health also uses CPET across clinical contexts, including rehabilitation and pre- and post-operative assessment where appropriate.
VO2 max reflects cardiorespiratory fitness, ie your body’s ability to take in, transport and use oxygen during physical activity. Cardiorespiratory fitness is associated with wider health outcomes and maintaining physical capacity as we age.
In many cases, yes. Appropriate aerobic training can improve cardiorespiratory fitness, although the degree of improvement differs between individuals. One advantage of laboratory testing is that it can identify physiological thresholds and help establish personalised exercise intensities, allowing training to be based on your actual physiology rather than generic heart-rate zones or assumptions about your fitness. Learn how to improve your VO2 max here.
Wearables can be useful for monitoring trends, but they generally estimate VO2 max using algorithms and information such as your heart rate and exercise performance. A laboratory CPET directly measures respiratory gas exchange under controlled conditions, making it a more appropriate choice when you want to establish an accurate baseline.
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