Fitness
Dan Lloyd’s journey back to fitness and health: The importance of VO2 max
I’ve done a lot of VO2 max tests in my adult life, and they’ve all had one thing in common: I’ve hated every single one of them.
Except the most recent one.
To accurately test your VO2 max, you need to push yourself to your physical limits. They’re painful, and I think best described as ‘an ordeal’. The icing on the cake is the tightly fitting mask on your face, whilst the cake itself is the excruciating pain in your legs and lungs as you near exhaustion.
There are some things I miss about being a pro cyclist, but there are a lot that I don’t. Training in the rain, filling in my anti-doping ‘Whereabouts’ every single day of the year, living out of a suitcase and crashing all immediately spring to mind. But VO2 max tests are very near the top.
Read more: What are power and heart rate zones and what do they mean for cyclists?
So why didn’t I hate the latest one? Because I’ve recently learnt that VO2 max is not only a fitness marker for elite endurance athletes to be interested in – we should ALL know what ours is, and keep it as high as we can, if we want to live the longest, healthiest lives possible. That is what episode 2 of my journey back to health and fitness is all about: why we should all be concerned with our VO2 max. You can find that video embedded within this article.
If you’re still sceptical (I would have been had I read this a year ago), please allow me to quote Peter Attia, one of the most respected longevity experts in the world. I’ve listened to a lot of his podcasts, and I’m most of the way through his book, Outlive: The Science & Art of Longevity. This is what he has to say on the subject of VO2 max:
“It is THE greatest predictor of lifespan. More strongly associated with reduced mortality risk than ANY other metric we know of.”
That sentence alone, when I heard it on a podcast, made me sit up, pay attention, and change my perspective. Of ALL the metrics we have to predict how long we are going to live, VO2 max is the best. That’s powerful. Attia goes on to say:
“Whether you smoke or don’t smoke, whether you have diabetes or don’t have diabetes, whether you have end stage kidney disease or don’t, whether you have heart disease or not, hypertension or not, all of those things play an important role in predicting the length of your life, but not as much as having a very high VO2 max. VO2 max rises above every other biomarker we have to predict the end of life.”
That’s not to say that the only thing we should be doing from here on in is trying to raise our VO2 max, it’s simply to highlight its importance. I’ll be covering the other things we should be paying attention to over the course of this series.
Read more: Dan Lloyd: Why I’ve decided to change my lifestyle
Those of you who watched episode 1 may remember that my VO2 max was measured at 52 when I started this journey a few weeks ago. As many pointed out in the comments, that’s not a number that is concerning. In fact it just about gets me into the ‘elite’ category for my age and gender. However, it’s quite the slump (>30%) since my last test in 2010, in which I recorded a VO2 max of 74.6.
In knowing what I know now, I obviously want to curb that decline, or hopefully even push it back. I’ve ‘gotten away’ with my lifestyle of the last 12 years because I started from such a high point, but I can’t afford to continue in that downward trajectory.
Unfortunately, though, it will decline… eventually. If we maintain the same levels of exercise from now until the end of our lives, our VO2 max will decline by 8-10% per decade, or around 1% per year. So, the higher we can get it now, the higher it’ll be in later life. The higher it is in later life, the more likely it is we’ll still be able to walk up stairs, ride bikes, pick up grandchildren or walk to the shops. I’ve found that thought particularly motivating – I may no longer have the desire to compete, or even take a Strava segment (never say never), but I do want to remain independent in my mobility for as long as I can. That process starts now.
The changes so far
What does that process look like at the moment? Well, I have made several changes to my lifestyle since episode one was released.
Firstly, I managed to stop the nicotine replacements almost four weeks ago. I’d been on them for four years. I did it ‘cold turkey’ and… So far, so good.
Read more: How bad is alcohol for cycling performance?
Secondly, I have reduced my alcohol consumption. Previously, I’d drink four to five nights a week, but I’m now only drinking on Fridays and Saturdays. That’s probably a reduction of around 30 units a week for me, given that I tend to drink strong beers, and quite a few of them.
Thirdly, I’ve been moving! Since episode one, I’ve done some sort of exercise every single day. Nothing excessive, but something. Some cycling, some running, some rucking (walking and hiking with a weighted backpack), and I’ve even joined a gym. I haven’t been doing anything too specific just yet, I just wanted to get into a routine of exercise again and make it a habit.
I’ve already seen some significant changes. I’ve recorded my highest HRV and my lowest resting heart rate since I started using a Whoop two and a half years ago. In the graphs below, you can see the effects that alcohol has on both those metrics.
On another note, I wanted to finish by saying that I was really blown away by the response to that first episode. I had come to a point in my life where I wanted to make a few changes, so I thought I’d document them, but I had no idea just how many of you were in such a similar space. If you’ve started your own journey since, I sincerely hope it’s going well for you. Let me know in the comments how you’ve been getting on.
I shall see you all soon for episode 3. In the meantime, it’s time for me to see if I can stay on the straight and narrow whilst covering the Giro d’Italia. Wish me luck!
You can keep up to date with Dan’s progress here on the GCN website and over on the GCN YouTube channel. Let us know in the comments below if Dan’s inspired you to make some lifestyle adjustments. We’d love to hear your stories too.
While exercise is known to improve memory, scientists have mostly studied this effect by using behavioral tests or brain imaging methods like MRIs, says Michelle Voss, PhD, one of the study’s authors, a professor, and the director of the Health, Brain, and Cognitive Lab at the University of Iowa in Iowa City.
But she says these approaches can’t precisely identify where “ripples” originate, particularly in the deep brain structures like the hippocampus, a part of the brain strongly connected to memory and learning, she says.
The current study, published in Brain Communications, recorded electrical activity directly, using surgically implanted (intracranial) electrodes. “This allowed us to observe how exercise changes the brain’s memory circuits in real time,” Dr. Voss says.
20-Minute Bursts of Exercise Increase Brain Ripples
The participants performed a 5-minute warm-up and then rode a stationary bike for 20 minutes at a pace they could maintain. Researchers recorded their brain activity before and after the biking session.
The electrodes showed an increased rate of so-called sharp-wave ripples from the hippocampus and connections with cortical regions of the brain, which are involved in learning and memory.
“Sharp-wave ripples have long been known from animal studies to play a central role in memory,” Voss says, adding that recent studies using intracranial recordings in humans also support the importance of ripples for human memory.
“Our findings are the first to show that exercise can modulate these ripple signals in the human brain,” she says.
Researchers also observed that larger increases in heart rate during exercise were associated with larger changes in ripple activity in cortical networks, Voss adds.
What’s Already Known About Exercise, Memory, and Learning
Exercise helps build connections between neurons, which deepens and strengthens brain networks, Franssen says.
Physical activity also improves metabolism, which improves insulin sensitivity, helping blood sugar regulation and giving the brain a “more stable and reliable supply of fuel,” Dr. Perlmutter says.
“This is critically important because the brain is an energy-intensive organ, consuming roughly 20 percent of the body’s energy despite representing only a small fraction of body weight,” he adds.
The Research Has Limitations
Voss says researchers were careful to “exclude signals that contained epileptic activity. However, of course, we can’t statistically control for the accumulated effects of having epilepsy on the brain.”
The exercise-brain ripple patterns observed in the current study also closely match those observed in healthy adults using noninvasive brain imaging, such as MRI, she added.
“That convergence across very different methods is one of the strongest indicators that the effects are not specific to epilepsy, but reflect a more general human brain response to exercise,” Voss said.
Researchers also didn’t directly test memory performance, Voss notes. “While hippocampal ripples are strongly linked to memory processing in decades of neuroscience research, the next step will be to measure how exercise-related changes in ripples relate to memory performance in the same individuals.”
Future studies should also compare exercise with other everyday activities, such as sitting quietly or light movement, to determine how specific these effects are to aerobic exercise at the intensity that was studied, she says.
Satisfy Your Brain’s Exercise Craving
It’s never too early or too late to start exercising for brain health, Franssen says.
People of any age, from grade-school children to people in their nineties, can benefit from increased physical activity, Perlmutter says. “My recommendation is to consider taking advantage of the connection between physical activity and brain health across the entire range of human aging.”
Any type of exercise is great, Franssen says, but especially “repetitive behaviors,” like swimming, jogging, and walking.
“Sometimes we let the hugeness of putting in a huge fitness routine get in our way,” she says. “Having a little exercise snack every so often is also very important to improving cognition.”
Increasing our level of physical fitness leads to a bigger release of brain-boosting proteins following one session of exercise, a new study led by a UCL researcher has found.
The study, published in Brain Research, took a group of inactive unfit participants through a 12-week training programme of cycling three times per week and made them fitter. Researchers found as their fitness increased, so did the amount of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) released following exercise, resulting in improved brain function.
Just 15 minutes of moderate to vigorous aerobic exercise releases BDNF, a brain protein which is known to support the formation of new neurons and new synapses (connections between brain cells), and maintains the health of existing neurons. This is the first study to show that for unfit people, just 12 weeks of consistent training can boost the brain’s response to a single 15-minute workout.
The study, led by Dr Flaminia Ronca (UCL Surgery & Interventional Science, and the Institute of Sport, Exercise and Health), involved 30 participants – 23 male and seven female – taking part in the 12-week programme. To assess fitness levels throughout the programme, participants completed VO2max tests every six weeks, which measures the maximum rate of oxygen your body can consume and use during intense exercise.
BDNF levels were measured pre- and post-VO2max testing, alongside a series of cognitive and memory tests, while also measuring changes in brain activity in the prefrontal cortex – where executive functions such as decision-making, emotion regulation, attention and impulsivity are controlled.
By the final week of the trial, results showed that baseline levels of BDNF did not change, but participants did show a larger spike of BDNF following intense exercise, compared to how their brains responded to intense exercise before the 12-week programme. This was linked to improvements in VO2max (aerobic fitness).
Higher overall BDNF levels and stronger exercise-induced increases were also associated with changes in activity across key areas of the prefrontal cortex during attention and inhibition tasks, though not during memory tasks.
Overall, the results showed that increasing physical fitness can enhance the brain’s ability to produce BDNF in response to acute bouts of exercise, which can have a strong positive influence on neural activity.
Lead author Dr Flaminia Ronca said: “We’ve known for a while that exercise is good for our brain, but the mechanisms through which this occurs are still being disentangled. The most exciting finding from our study is that if we become fitter, our brains benefit even more from a single session of exercise, and this can change in only six weeks.”
Notes to editors:
For more information or to speak to the researchers involved, please contact: Tom Cramp, UCL Media Relations , T: +447586 711698, E: [email protected]
The research paper: ‘BDNF relates to prefrontal cortex activity in the context of physical exercise’, Flaminia Ronca, Cian Xu, Ellen Kong, Dennis Chan, Antonia Hamilton, Giampietro Schiavo, Ilias Tachtsidis, Paola Pinti, Benjamin Tari, Tom Gurney, Paul W. Burgess, is published in Brain Research, March 2026,
About UCL (University College London)
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Since 1826, we have championed independent thought by attracting and nurturing the world’s best minds. Our community of more than 50,000 students from 150 countries and over 16,000 staff pursues academic excellence, breaks boundaries and makes a positive impact on real world problems.
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Journal
Brain Research
DOI
10.1016/j.brainres.2026.150253
Method of Research
Experimental study
Subject of Research
People
Article Title
BDNF relates to prefrontal cortex activity in the context of physical exercise
Article Publication Date
4-Mar-2026
Media Contact
Tom Cramp
University College London
[email protected]
Journal
Brain Research
DOI
10.1016/j.brainres.2026.150253
Journal
Brain Research
DOI
10.1016/j.brainres.2026.150253
Method of Research
Experimental study
Subject of Research
People
Article Title
BDNF relates to prefrontal cortex activity in the context of physical exercise
Article Publication Date
4-Mar-2026
Tags
/Health and medicine/Human health/Physical exercise
bu içeriği en az 2000 kelime olacak şekilde ve alt başlıklar ve madde içermiyecek şekilde ünlü bir science magazine için İngilizce olarak yeniden yaz. Teknik açıklamalar içersin ve viral olacak şekilde İngilizce yaz. Haber dışında başka bir şey içermesin. Haber içerisinde en az 12 paragraf ve her bir paragrafta da en az 50 kelime olsun. Cevapta sadece haber olsun. Ayrıca haberi yazdıktan sonra içerikten yararlanarak aşağıdaki başlıkların bilgisi var ise haberin altında doldur. Eğer yoksa bilgisi ilgili kısmı yazma.:
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Keywords
Tags: 12-week cycling training program benefitsbrain plasticity and physical fitnessbrain-derived neurotrophic factor after exerciseeffects of aerobic exercise on BDNFexercise and neuron healthexercise-induced neurogenesisfitness level impact on brain proteinsfitness training for cognitive improvementimproving brain function through fitnessmoderate to vigorous aerobic exercise effectsphysical fitness and brain healthVO2max and brain function correlation
SOLE Fitness announces new additions to its home exercise bike range, with models including built-in screens, resistance systems, and notably, zero monthly subscription fees.
— SOLE Fitness has announced a new range of home exercise bikes aligning with its policy against mandatory monthly subscription fees – addressing a growing concern among cost-conscious fitness enthusiasts.
For more information, visit: https://www.soletreadmills.com/collections/bikes
The announcement comes as subscription fatigue intensifies across the home fitness market – where hidden costs of ongoing memberships have become a significant pain point for buyers. Many consumers now actively seek alternatives that deliver premium features without the financial burden of perpetual fees – and SOLE Fitness offers its range in direct response.
Technical capabilities across the range support the no-subscription experience through innovative design and robust hardware. For instance, SOLE Fitness cites the SB1200 exercise bike as a suitable option for its 10-inch touchscreen – including preloaded entertainment applications.
SOLE’s team notes that this particular model also incorporates 100 levels of adjustable magnetic resistance, offering a broad spectrum of intensity for diverse workout preferences. A 35-pound flywheel contributes to smooth, consistent pedaling motion, while the durable steel frame supports users up to 300 pounds.
Elsewhere in the range, SOLE Fitness offers options across recumbent, upright, and indoor cycling styles to accommodate different fitness goals and space constraints.
The LCR Recumbent Bike is an example of a comfortable seated design with back support, ideal for low-impact cardio sessions, coming with 40 levels of magnetic resistance. The B94 Upright Bike, meanwhile, delivers a traditional bike posture with 20 levels of resistance, suited for users seeking straightforward training without advanced touchscreen features.
Central to the value proposition is the SOLE+ App, which provides zero-cost online fitness classes to customers who own SOLE equipment. The app offers hundreds of home gym video tutorials ranging from basic to advanced routines – standing in contrast to platforms that charge separately for similar content.
As explained by SOLE Fitness, its overall range is engineered for smooth, silent rides through magnetic resistance systems, sturdy steel frames, and precision components that deliver a premium indoor cycling experience. Magnetic resistance eliminates the wear and noise associated with friction pads, while the structural integrity of the frames ensures stability during high-intensity intervals.
“Each treadmill is crafted to provide an unparalleled exercise experience, featuring robust motors, intuitive controls, and cushioned running surfaces for maximum impact absorption,” says a company representative.
Moreover, since the company’s product portfolio is designed to offer entry points at various price levels, customers have readily available access to select models that align with their own budget and training preferences.
Interested parties can browse the full selection at: https://www.soletreadmills.com/
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Organization: SOLE Fitness
Address: 56 Exchange Pl., Salt Lake City, UT 84111, United States
Website: https://www.soletreadmills.com/
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