over fit or over trained?

TheGreatGatsby

How can you tell? If your HR is ridiculously low as is your cal burn would you put it down to being remarkably fit or being over trained?

Say a 31 year old male who rides 300-400miles a week, and weighs 10 and a half stone did a 3.5hr bike ride at an average of 87bmp at 16mph is this overtrained or just fit?

Gats

redddraggon

TheGreatGatsby wrote:

Say a 31 year old male who rides 300-400miles a week, and weighs 10 and a half stone did a 3.5hr bike ride at an average of 87bmp at 16mph is this overtrained or just fit?

Sounds like you aren't working hard enough.

SteveR_100Milers

All depends on your MHR.

Or could be your HRM is also giving you wrong readings.

Or you could be the next Lance

deal

my average is a little under double that for an average ride

SteveR_100Milers

deal wrote:

my average is a little under double that for an average ride

Why cry?

HR is unique for each person and is a pointless comnparison. %MHR might be more meaningful.

Alex_Simmons/RST

TheGreatGatsby wrote:

How can you tell? If your HR is ridiculously low as is your cal burn would you put it down to being remarkably fit or being over trained?

Say a 31 year old male who rides 300-400miles a week, and weighs 10 and a half stone did a 3.5hr bike ride at an average of 87bmp at 16mph is this overtrained or just fit?

Gats

"Calorie burn" is dependent on the amount of work done and gross efficiency (which doesn't vary much). It has nothing to do with heart rate.

deal

SteveR_100Milers wrote:

deal wrote:

my average is a little under double that for an average ride

Why cry?

HR is unique for each person and is a pointless comnparison. %MHR might be more meaningful.

not crying really, bad choice of smilie
I average around 82%MHR for a typical 3 hour hilly ride, for the dragonride shorter route my average was around 79% MHR for a 5hr+ period, i rode the route with someone else and there average was around 65% of there MHR.

what does this mean ? does this mean this person had the capacity to work the body a good bit harder or are some people not able to maintain high %MHR for long periods ?

SteveR_100Milers

It means yor heart was under more stress than yor buddy, or that your Max HR value is to low (or his is to high).

Who was the most knackered? and who was fastest up the climbs? Thats probably more relevant.

Gr.uB

When out with friends lately, we have been shouting out our HR as we go along. It has become a bit of a game, trying to be the fitter !!

Alex_Simmons/RST

Gr.uB wrote:

When out with friends lately, we have been shouting out our HR as we go along. It has become a bit of a game, trying to be the fitter !!

Try riding hard enough so you can't shout, then you'll find out who's really fitter.

GeorgeShaw

Alex_Simmons/RST wrote:

Gr.uB wrote:

When out with friends lately, we have been shouting out our HR as we go along. It has become a bit of a game, trying to be the fitter !!

Try riding hard enough so you can't shout, then you'll find out who's really fitter.

jpembroke

Alex_Simmons/RST wrote:

Try riding hard enough so you can't shout, then you'll find out who's really fitter.

Bang on the money! I have a mate who will talk the whole way round a ride (bit of pot/kettle/black as I can talk for England, but anyway). It's quite funny in a way: he's there talking away, then his voice gets increasingly distant as the road goes uphill until it's a distant murmur behind me somewhere, and then it's gone altogether. Then I'll wait at the top of climb for the voice to come back in to a range and off we go again.

And then when we get back he'll be disappointed at how slowly he climbs.

:?

Perhaps serious cyclists should be seen and not heard

nolf

Getting back to the question,

Try doing a harder ride and deliberately aiming to raise your heart rate. Do some intervals or something and have a go at hard efforts. If you find the motivation just isn't there, or your heart rate stubbornly refuses to rise you may be overtraining.

300/400 miles a week is a lot, and I've read posts by you before that leads me to believe you probably are overtraining. Take some time off the bike completely, I find when I'm overtraining my body starts to get colds etc, so I just take 2 days off the bike with lots of sleep and eating, and then usually feel a lot better because of it.