VO2max Testing in Melbourne

Just wanted to let all trainers and fighters know that I'll be in Melbourne next weekend doing VO2max treadmill tests. This is great for giving exact heart rate training zones for improving aerobic and/or anaerobic fitness.
I'll be out at Keith's new place on Saturday, and in the city on Sunday. It takes 30 minutes to complete, including warm up, actual test is about 15 minutes, and costs $100 (usual cost at universities or sporting institutes is $300-$400).

If you're keen to send someone along send me a message.

Cheers,
Ray

 

I'd love to hear your reasoning.

Ray

 

I was interested in hearing your reasoning because this is seen as the gold standard in fitness testing, and with the amount of running many fighters do they can significantly improve their perormance, and often reduce the amount of time they spend training just through making their training more specific to their own body.

Can you get by without it? Of course you can. But it will make your training more specific to yourself and your current fitness level, and will greatly decrease the chance of undertraining or overtraining. The information you get gives you a base-point to measure how productive your training has been, and also gives you an accurate point to be providing regular, measured overload so you can be increasing your fitness in a safe and effective manner.

Fortunately for me, most athletes and trainers agree that its well worth the money.

Ray

 

As it is done on a treadmill it is obviously more specific to those who compete in running events, but as many fighters use running to get their weight down as well as to work on their Central Circulatory System (Heart, Lungs, etc), and there is a good transfer for fighters. They certainly need to do the high intesity boxing work to go along with it though

Most of the fighters I deal with are often blown away by the difference in intensity between what the test shows them they can handle, and what they have previously been doing.

I have actually designed a more specific test for boxers, The Boxing Beep Test, but the apparatus is still being fine-tuned.

 

Hi Marcus,

There are a number of ways of improving your VO2max, and we can do it with much shorter work than that. I get to test quite a number of fighters and their scores usually range between 60ml/kg/min and 70ml/kg/min, which is quite nice for any athlete (a competitive Triathlete would aim for between 70-80 and they do loads of endurane training.

Given that boxing is more an Anaerobic Endurance sport, it's the aerobic threshold info that is most important. If we can increase that we can improve the fighter's ability to work at a high intensity aerobically, as well as recover quickly from any bursts they have during a fight. Obviously the effectiveness of this will depend on the type of boxing specific work that is done too.

I've just put up a printout from the test here: http://www.raykellyfitness.com/SportsScience/VO2maxTest/tabid/230/Default.aspx

The graph is your heart rate plotted alongside your ventilation (breathing).

If you can get me some bookings in Tassie I'd love to come down. I came down to the Australian Rowing Championships a number of years ago and loved it.

Ray

 

I'm based in Sydney. Send me a message if you're keen.

Ray