Arguably the ultimate study on VO2max and ageing was performed by (and on) the legendary exercise physiologist David Bruce Dill, who was one of the principal researchers in the Harvard study described above. Dill was the research director of the Harvard lab from the time it opened in 1927 until it closed in 1947, and his classic textbook, Life, Heat, and Altitude, was an enormously important early contribution to the field of exercise physiology. Dill tested himself regularly in the laboratory from the age of 37 until he died, aged 93; in this 56-year span his VO2max went south at an average rate of only 0.23 ml/kg/min per year – an amazingly slow decline(3). Dr Dill was noted for his incredible level of regular physical activity, which included – as he grew older – prolonged bouts of fast-paced desert hiking!
In 1987, a year after Dill’s death, Dr Michael Pollock and co-investigators at the Mt Sinai Medical Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, reported an astonishing finding which lent further credence to the idea that very strenuous exercise was a VO2max preserver: well-trained, competitive endurance athletes with an average initial age of 52 were able to totally maintain VO2max values over a 10-year period(4)!
In the full group of 24 athletes studied by Pollock and crew, VO2max went into a tailspin averaging 9% during the decade of study. However, Pollock learned that some of the 24 athletes had continued to train vigorously and be competitive during the 10-year study, while others had become quite sedentary; and when he split the analysis, he found that the more active athletes had absolutely maintained their average VO2max at a steady 54 ml/kg/min – despite decreases in their maximal heart rates – while the less active ones had seen their VO2max values plummet by 12%.