Here are some solutions that have worked for other forum members in the past;
Apple says;
Your Apple Watch gives you a cardio fitness ESTIMATE by measuring how hard your heart is working during an outdoor walk, run or hike.
VO2 max relates to maximal exertion. So you’ll need to log a pretty intensive workout to generate a reading. And you’ll need to sustain it for at least 20 minutes.
Tighten the watch band a touch and clean the sensors on the bottom of the watch..
Reset fitness calibration.
Input a VO2 max figure manually based off your last record from the health app then re-calibrate the watch.
Put the watch in airplane mode,do a walking/running or hiking workout of at least 20 minutes,when you've finished turn airplane mode off and let the watch sync the data to the phone.
Other foum members solutions;
Put my phone in airplane mode and made sure that bluetooth also was off. Normal airplane mode won't disable bluetooth if you have an Apple Watch. I checked on the watch that it was completely cut off from the phone.Did a 25 minute outdoor walk.
And that did it! When the walk was finished I had a VO2 Max reading with the watch as data source!
Today I did another walk, the exact same route, but with my watch fully connected to the phone. After the walk I got a new data point, so it seems to be working as it should.
Puzzl1ng
User level:Level 1
(21 points)
Apple WatchSpeciality level out of ten: 0
Oct 20, 2020 11:50 AM in response to Puzzl1ng
Update: 2020/10/20
Finally, a solution!
A couple of days ago, I went for a walk. I started the Workout-Outdoors Walk but for some reason I forgot to link the watch to the iphone as I always do and kept it on airplane mode. I walked for about 25 minutes then synced with the phone not expecting anything to happen. I was surprised to see a VO2 max recorded.
Emboldened, I kept the watch linked to the iphone and went for another 25 minute walk hoping to get another VO2 max reading. Surprisingly, *no* VO2 max was recorded during the second walk.
Since that day, I have done a few runs and multiple walks while keeping the watch in airplane mode in all of them: each one recorded a VO2 max without a problem.
So put your watch on airplane mode, go for a run/walk, and see if it helps.
Oct 1, 2020 4:39 AM in response to Scheldon
Hi,
I managed to get my Apple Watch to record a VO2 Max today. I've done a number of things recently so I'll list the key things for others to see if this works for them.
I manually added a VO2 Max entry at the start of the week.
I completed my first run duration of over 20 mins, hoping that would trigger something. It didn't.
I immediately completed a Walk of over 20 mins. My Apple Watch updated the VO2 Max immediately after the Walk.