Your watch says your VO₂max is rising. It is guessing.
Estimated fitness is a useful trend and a poor number. Here is why the only VO₂max worth training against is one you actually measure.
VO₂max is among the strongest predictors of how long you will live, which is exactly why the number deserves to be real. A wearable does not measure it. It infers it from your heart rate and your pace, using an algorithm built on a population, not on you.
That works well enough to show a direction. It works poorly for a precise figure: independent validation puts the individual error wide enough to exceed what counts as a clinically meaningful change, and the bias tends to flatter the unfit and underrate the very fit.
A measured VO₂max test reads the air you breathe under load. It gives you a true starting line, a true ceiling, and a number that means something when it moves.
