VO2 Max Is the New Net Worth

Marcus built a seven-figure logistics company from a spreadsheet and a pickup truck. Then, at 44, he had to stop halfway up a flight of stairs just to catch his breath.

His body was sending him a signal more important than any business metric he'd ever tracked: VO2 max.

VO2 max measures how well your body uses oxygen under stress, and it's now one of the strongest predictors of a long, healthy life; stronger than cholesterol, blood pressure, or BMI. Most high-performing founders have never had it measured.

In this episode: what VO2 max is, why top firms now track it in executive health programs, how wearables put it on your wrist, and the simple training protocol that rebuilds it.

This isn't a fitness episode. It's an infrastructure episode. Your body is the foundation on which everything else is built.

Build the body. Build the business. Build the life.

Transcript

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Welcome to Builder's Creed, the show for the doers, the closers, and the operators building real businesses from the ground up. Every week we dive into the topics that matter for leaders in the trades, from how to keep your body right to how to grow your business, to how to manage your sales org, and everything in between. This isn't theory, it's the playbook straight from the people living it. If you're building something of your own, you're in the right place. Let's get into it. Let me tell you about a guy named Marcus. Marcus is 44. He built a seven-figure logistics company from a spreadsheet and a pickup truck. Long hours, constant travel, beautiful family, big house, the kind of life his younger self could barely imagine. But three months ago, Marcus climbed two flights of stairs in his own office building and had to stop at the top to catch his breath. His assistant noticed Marcus brushed it off. What he did not realize was that his body was sending a signal far more important than any business metric he tracked. That signal has a name. VO2max. It measures how efficiently your body uses oxygen during intense activity. In simple terms, it reflects how strong your heart, lungs, and metabolic system really are under pressure. It is a strong predictor of how long and how well you are going to live. And when that number drops, your body starts aging faster than it should. This episode is about why builders, founders, operators, and high performers are suddenly obsessing over this metric. Because the people who treat business like a performance system are starting to realize something uncomfortable. Your company is not the only thing being built. Your body is too. And eventually one of them becomes the bottleneck for the other. What does it mean to be a builder? It is the mindset to create something from nothing and to bet on yourself when no one else does. I am the AI avatar representing Justin Brack, founder and CEO of a subcontractor hub, the operating system for builders. He has adopted all aspects of AI, and I help him get you the information you need while things are moving forward so quickly. This is The Builders Creed, where we explore the mindset of the people who create, risk, and rebuild. Because building something real is the most powerful act of rebellion there is. And today we are going all the way in on VO2 Max. Now, before you reach for the skip button, thinking this is some fitness bro episode about marathon times and compression socks, I need you to stay with me because this is not a fitness episode. This is an infrastructure episode. This is about the foundation underneath everything you're trying to build. And if that foundation is crumbling, if your cardiovascular engine is running at 40% capacity while you're trying to operate at 100% output, then everything you're constructing is on borrowed time. In March of 2026, a landmark study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association confirmed something that the performance medicine world had been whispering about for years. VO2max is the single strongest predictor of all-cause mortality in existence. Elite fit individuals, people in the top tier of VO2MAX for their age, showed five times lower mortality risk than their low fit peers. You could have perfect cholesterol, ideal blood pressure, a BMI that your doctor puts a little smiley face next to. And if VO2 max is in the basement, you are still in far more danger than someone whose other numbers are messier, but whose cardiovascular engine is firing. This is a complete restructuring of how we should think about the human body. Let's get into the mechanics. VO2max stands for maximum oxygen uptake. It measures the highest rate at which your body can use oxygen during intense exercise. Your heart, lungs, blood vessels, and muscles all have to work together under pressure. VO2max tells you how well that system performs when demand is high. Think of it like a high performance engine. The better the engine, the more efficiently it pulls fuel, uses it, and produces power. VO2max is that same idea for the human body. A sedentary 40-year-old man might sit around 35. A recreational runner may be around 45 to 50. Elite endurance athletes can go above 80. But here is the part people ignore. VO2 Max declines with age. Starting around your late 20s, it can drop about 1% per year if you do nothing to protect it. Add stress, poor sleep, long work hours, and years of putting the business ahead of the body, and the decline gets faster. That is how a 44-year-old builder can have the cardiovascular engine of someone much older, and most people never know because we usually measure disease markers, cholesterol, blood sugar, blood pressure. Those numbers matter, but they often tell you what is already going wrong. VO2 max is different. It is a performance metric, a prediction metric. It shows the direction your body is heading before the crisis arrives, but they never measured it or tracked it. So they were running their body with one of the most important pieces of infrastructure data completely missing that changes now. Now let's talk about who is paying attention to this because the early adopters are not just biohackers and longevity influencers. It is people obsessed with performance. In 2025 and 2026, firms like JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs began incorporating VO2max tracking into executive health programs. These companies invest in metrics when the data shows performance risk, a declining VO2 max signals reduced resilience, recovery, cognitive performance, and long-term health. In other words, the person running the machine becomes the weak point in the machine itself. That may sound cold, but it is also accurate. And now the technology is catching up. For years, measuring VO2 max required a lab, a treadmill, a breathing mask, and trained technicians. It was expensive and inaccessible. Now it lives on your wrist. Devices like Whoop 5.0 and Garmin's endurance-focused wearables brought VO2max tracking into everyday life. It always runs in the background. That changes everything. A founder in a small town no longer needs a sports performance clinic to understand one of the strongest predictors of longevity and performance. That kind of access changes behavior at scale. Zone 2. Training content has exploded online. Outlive helped push cardiovascular fitness and longevity into mainstream conversation. Millions of people are now treating endurance like a business KPI instead of a fitness hobby. Then there is HyRox. HyROX combines running with functional workout stations like rowing, sled pushes, burpees, and wall balls. It is about usable endurance, and its growth shows where the culture is moving. The same trend is showing up in the supplement industry. Endurance-focused brands are growing rapidly because the market follows behavior, and behavior follows belief. Your cardiovascular system is not just health, it is performance capacity, and the builders who understand that are beginning to separate themselves from everyone else. Alright, so now you are convinced VO2max matters. Here is the important part. The fitness industry wants you to believe you need expensive programs, specialized coaches, memberships, and endless subscriptions to build cardiovascular fitness. You do not. The foundation is surprisingly simple. Zone two training. It is steady aerobic work. Your heart rate is elevated, but you can still hold a conversation. If you can talk comfortably, you are probably in zone two. If you are gasping for air, you have gone too hard. This is where your aerobic engine gets built. Your mitochondria, the energy producers inside your cells become stronger and more efficient. Over time, that directly improves endurance, energy production, VO2 max. Researchers and performance experts like Peter Atia and Inigo San Milan have emphasized this for years because the evidence is clear. Consistent zone 2 training is one of the most effective ways to improve long-term cardiovascular fitness. The recommendation is simple about three to four hours per week. That could mean brisk uphill walking, cycling, jogging, rowing, or swimming. You do not need a gym or expensive equipment. And for builders, the hardest part is not effort. It is restraint because pushing harder is not always better. If you constantly go too hard, you leave zone two and enter a higher stress state that creates more fatigue without the same aerobic adaptation. Zone two teaches patience, slow, repeatable progress, building the foundation before chasing intensity. That should sound familiar because that is how real businesses are built too. Then, on top of that aerobic base, research also supports one or two high-intensity sessions each week. Short intervals near maximum effort force the cardiovascular system to adapt upward. One popular method is the Norwegian 4x4 protocol, four minutes at near maximum intensity, followed by recovery, repeated four times. You can track VO2 max today with a wearable or lab test. You can improve it over 90 days, six months, or a year. You can build systems around it, measure progress, adjust based on data. That is builder culture applied to human performance, and the benefits go far beyond fitness. Higher VO2max proves cognitive function, energy levels, stress tolerance, sleep quality, and recovery. Your brain gets more oxygen, your body produces energy more efficiently, you think more clearly and handle pressure better. I want to come back to Marcus for a moment because Marcus is not a cautionary story. He is proof of what is possible. A man who built a seven-figure logistics company from a spreadsheet and a pickup truck can absolutely rebuild his health. The issue was never capability. It was always priority, and that is what all of this data is pointing toward. They are all saying the same thing. A physically broken builder cannot perform at their highest level for long. For years, we romanticized burnout. But eventually the cost shows up. Slowly, the engine degrades, and one day you realize the most neglected project in your life was the one carrying you through all the others. Your body, the shift happening right now, is bigger than fitness. It is a shift in how ambitious people think about performance itself. The old model was aesthetics, the new model is function. Can your body actually support the scale of your ambition? That is why VO2 Max matters, because it is a performance metric. It affects longevity, cognitive function, energy, resilience, stress handling, and overall capacity. And for most builders, it is one of the most important numbers they have never measured. The good news is this you do not need permission to improve it. You need a baseline, a plan, consistency, and the willingness to treat your body with the same intentionality you bring to your business because the body is not separate from the work. The body is the infrastructure that makes the work possible. The builders who understand this are building better, they think more clearly, handle pressure more effectively, sustain energy longer, show up more fully for the people and projects that matter most. They compound, and every great builder understands the power of compounding. Here's your assignment. Step one, get your baseline VO2max. Check your wearable if it tracks it. If you want a more accurate number, book a VO2max test. Step two, compare it to your age group. Look up VO2max norms by age and gender. See where you actually stand, not where you assume you stand. Step three, build the system. Three to four hours of zone two training per week. One or two high intensity sessions per week, consistent sleep repeat. That is the protocol. Step four, measure again in 90 days, track the change, celebrate progress, adjust what is not working. This is the build cycle applied to your body. And step five, share this with one builder in your life who is running on fumes. Because the best thing you can do for the people you build with and the people you build for is stay in the game long enough to finish what you started. This is the builder's creed. Build the body, build the business, build the life, and do not ask permission for any of it. I will see you in the next one. That's a wrap on this one. To everyone in the Builder's Creed community, thank you for being here, for showing up, and for building alongside us. None of this works without you. If this episode hit home, do me a favor, hit that like button, subscribe so you never miss an episode, and share it with someone who needs to hear it. Until next time, keep building.