Fitzgerald says VO2 max workouts only raise it short term
The coach behind @jasonfitz1 argues the long-term build comes from years of easy and steady running, not interval sessions.
Jason Fitzgerald says the standard advice about VO2 max workouts leaves out three words. Writing as @jasonfitz1, he says all the advice about "workouts to increase your VO2 Max" is missing a key phrase, "in the short term."
His argument is that the long game looks nothing like the short game. If you want to raise your VO2 max (the ceiling on how much oxygen your body can use) over years rather than weeks, he says you would not do any of those workouts at all. You would build what he calls a massive aerobic engine with Z1, Z2 and Z3 running over years, meaning easy and steady efforts rather than the hard repeats most runners associate with the number.
He is not telling anyone to delete intervals. He adds that you still have to do some VO2 work, with the caveat that "playing with fire has risks."
What it actually means
This is one coach reframing a familiar session, not new evidence. The practical read is that a VO2 max workout is a sharpening tool that lifts the number for a block, while the thing that moves it across a career is the volume of unglamorous running underneath. If you are judging a training plan by how many hard interval days it has, Fitzgerald's framing says you are reading the wrong line.
It also lands in a stretch where coaches keep arguing about how that hard work should be structured rather than whether to do it. Steve Magness recently told amateur runners to swap the classic four by three minutes for shorter, faster reps, which is a different fix to the same session (earlier).
The overlap between the two is the useful part for anyone building a spring block. Nobody in either camp is saying skip the hard days. They are saying the hard days are a small, risky slice of a plan that lives or dies on what the easy weeks look like.
All this advice about "workouts to increase your VO2 Max" are missing a key phrase: "in the short term.
Of course, you still have to do some VO2 work! But playing with fire has risks...
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