Calculating heart rate monitor zones

NewburyRider

I use a heart rate monitor for my running training very successfully - my maximum heart rate (220 - age) is 185, giving an aerobic zone (70 - 80% of max) of 130-150 and when I run I can maintain my heart rate in this zone with no difficulty. After suffering an injury after cycling too hard last week I decided to use my HRM to moderate my cycle training. I took it out today and found that at what I considered a fair pace my rate was around 125 (except on steep hills when it got up to 157). It seems that I was finding that lactic acid was starting to build up before my heart rate got very high - should I have different training zones for cycling or am I just a less fit cyclist that I am a runner?

sebcp

You should have completely different HR zones for cycling and running.
I've been training with a HR for 10 months for an ironman and used HR zones for both. You should do a lactate threshold test for each which gives you your average and then use an online calculator ( I can supply you one) to get your HR zones. As a rule of thumb, cycling zones are 10bpm lower than running. I just did the running LT test as I couldn't face the bike one. They are tough and I chucked up twice doing the run one.

When you look at zone calculators in different places they all differ very slightly. I looked at 2 from the same person (I think it was Joe Friel in 'The Longest Day' about Ironman training) and that gave slightly different results.

TechnoBuddhist

What HR Zones do people use? I've seen a couple of different ones and want to know what everybody else thinks/uses.

I'm not into competitions and the only one I've ever used is this one;

<b>Zone %MHR   Description</b>
 1   60-65  Easy Riding, recovery training 
 2   65-70  Endurance base training
 3   70-80  Aerobic capacity training
 4   80-85  Lactate threshold training
 5    86+   Max aerobic training, increasing max VO2

Thoughts?

PhilBixby

My advice would be to ignore the 220-age approximation as it's just SO inaccurate - I'm 48 and my maxHR isn't 172 at all - it's around 190. So, base your zones on measured figures, which means either:-

-Get tested at a local lab - lots of Uni's have sports science facilities and can do tests at a reaonable cost, or
-Get out to the longest, steepest, nastiest hill you can find and go up it a couple of times in succession, preferably with a mate who's quicker than you, for an approximation of maxHR, or
-Forget maxHR completely, do a half-hour time trial as fast as you can and check your average HR for the latter 20mins; this will be at or around your lactate threshold, and you can work out training zones from there.

Your figures will vary between cycling and running though.

TB:- my training zones are based on Joe Friel's recommendations and are 115-143 recovery, 144-156 endurance, 157-163 tempo, 164-174 sub-threshold (all of these figures are based upon identified lactate threshold, which for me, the last time I tested, was 175) and then 175 upwards is anaerobic. I've never been bothered to convert these to percentages of a rather hazy estimate of maxHR.

Edit:- I've just checked (must be a quiet day) and those figures put my LT at around 92% of my maxHR, so training at 80-85% wouldn't do much for LT training. I'd trust Friel's approach anytime.

Phil B
Clifton CC York

Toks

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by NewburyRider</i>

I use a heart rate monitor for my running training very successfully - my maximum heart rate (220 - age) is 185, giving an aerobic zone (70 - 80% of max) of 130-150 and when I run I can maintain my heart rate in this zone with no difficulty. After suffering an injury after cycling too hard last week I decided to use my HRM to moderate my cycle training. I took it out today and found that at what I considered a fair pace my rate was around 125 (except on steep hills when it got up to 157). It seems that I was finding that lactic acid was starting to build up before my heart rate got very high - should I have different training zones for cycling or am I just a less fit cyclist that I am a runner?
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">http://www.cyclingforums.com/t339229.html

The Merckx Diaries I hope the fella in the white box truck who tried to squeeze me into set of traffic lights outside of Barnet devlops a headache that lasts till the TDF prologue next weekend.

TechnoBuddhist

Toks, thx for link to HRcalc. shows a lot of different training zones. cheers!

bigdawg

theres a heart rate training book by Joe Freil, and in the back of that it has heart rate calculators for about 6 or 7 different sports, all based around your lactate threshold.

If anyone wants the limits mail me your lactate threshold heart rate and Ill post em up...

exmachina

This is going to probbaly sound pretty stupid..

one thing that I can't understand about heartrate is that when I go out my heart rate is usually 155-170 I find it really difficult to actually get my HR any lower. If I freewheel down hill for a few K's it will drop down to 130ish but then as soon as i start to pedal again i will go back upto 155 +

Maybe I need to develop more than 1 speed!!

bigdawg

thats more to do with your recovery, and how quickly your heart takes to lower itself, although I thought a couple of Km's downhill would have taken quite a few minutes.

When you get off your bike does it take that long to go down too??

Mike Willcox1

There is another way.

Try riding on feel. You can ride easy, modertae, hard and even do intervals all quite well withoiut a HRM and achieve all your training objectives. It's really quite simple.

All HRM's do is cause anxiety. Am I in the right zone? Give me a break!

wherryman

"This is going to probbaly sound pretty stupid..

one thing that I can't understand about heartrate is that when I go out my heart rate is usually 155-170 I find it really difficult to actually get my HR any lower. If I freewheel down hill for a few K's it will drop down to 130ish but then as soon as i start to pedal again i will go back upto 155 +

Maybe I need to develop more than 1 speed!!"


Hi, I would investigate this further,in the first minute after hard exercise your heartrate should drop quite significantly, check "heart rate recovery" on google to find some useful info http://www.skyaid.org/Skyaid%20Org/Medi ... y_rate.htm gives you an idea.

"Heart rate recovery is a measurement of how much the heart rate falls during the first minute after peak exercise. It is routinely measured during millions of exercise tests every year. Doctors usually order these tests when they suspect that a patient may have a heart in trouble.

Patients are put on a treadmill and exercise to the point that they can't go on. It is then that the heart rate recovery is taken. Afterward, it's added to the picture created by how long the person can exercise and what the heart rate was doing during the exercise test. This big picture can give doctors a pretty accurate idea of how well the heart is working.

The healthier a person's heart is, the quicker it returns to its normal beat; the less healthy the heart is, the longer it takes it to recover from something like an exercise stress test.

"One simply subtracts the heart rate two minutes after exercise from the heart rate at the end of exercise," says Michael S. Lauer, MD, director of the Cleveland Clinic Exercise Laboratory in Ohio and the lead researcher of the study.

Lauer and colleagues found that people with an abnormal heart rate recovery, which consists of a score -- or decrease -- of 12 or less beats per minute, were at a greater risk for death from heart disease than those with normal heart rate recovery, which is a decrease of 15 to 25 beats per minute.

Both tests are very simple and, according to these authors, will give a good picture of who should be treated aggressively for heart disease and who should be reassured that they are at little risk.

"If a patient has a normal heart rate recovery and normal exercise stress test, I tell them that everything looks great for them, that they have a risk for having a major life-threatening problem of less than one half of 1% per year," he says. "If the test is abnormal, the risk moves up to 3% or 5% per year. That means we really have to get to work."

So what are those who have abnormal heart rate recovery times to do? According to Lauer, they should be even more motivated to become healthier and reduce their risk for heart disease.

"People who had abnormal heart rate recovery times are at increased risk for [heart disease] so that everything that can be fixed, should be," Lauer says. "

blackhands

What are you talking about? According to the references you have cited a drop of 15 to 25 beats per min is normal - he is sying his HR drops from 25 to 40 bpm so he's npormal. In fact the rate of hr drop is an indicator of cardiovascular fitness - I once coached someone whose HR would drop fom nealy 200 to under 50 in a few minutes - but then he was an Olympic medal winner.

wherryman

Ok, I read it as him saying a drop from 155-170 to 130ish after a freewheel of a few k's ? How long does a few k's take - thats two miles, at 60mph thats 2mins, 30mph thats 4mins at 20mph thats 6mins. My rate drops from 170 to 110 in 2 mins. My point was that if he is taking 4-6mins to drop 40 beats he may be overdoing it at this stage - it might be worth getting some advice. Thats what I'm talking about unless you read it differently ?

ddraver

i have a similar problem...just that the "fat burning" zone is so low that i go really slowly and i get bored

goin my average 30kph or so, my bpm is higher than that zone?!

ut_och_cykla

I seem to remeber thatHRM maxs are somewhat position dependent, as most triathletes have discovered. swimming lowest, running highest. Also relative fitness plays a large role. A good cyclist will initially be comparatively cr*p at running as teh muscles used and teh weight they bear etc is different.
If you're not racing the 'give it all you've got over 20 minutes' (after warming up) is a good base to work with.
DDraver: The so-called fat burning zone is a misperception. Low level exercise burns low levels of energy(calories), mostly from fat sources. Highest % fat burnt is when you are asleep! Hard exercise uses more energy (calories) and more of this energy comes from carb stored in liver etc. Most energy burnt is achieved at high levels of aerobic exercise. BUT its a good idea to start at a low level and build up slowly. Add some brisker sections/intervalls as you feel fitter (after a few weeks / months) to take away boredom

bigdawg

ddraver wrote:

i have a similar problem...just that the "fat burning" zone is so low that i go really slowly and i get bored

goin my average 30kph or so, my bpm is higher than that zone?!

THe inceredible 'fat burning zone' is something of a myth. At the end of the day if you burn more calories than you consume you will lose weight. Also if you stick to a set route (say 10 miles) if you do it in the FBZ it will take you longer than an aerobic average speed workout and you will burn more calories. However if you exercise for an hour in the FBV and an hour in aerobic you'll burn more calories in the aerobic zone...