Different Heart Rate Zones - Help!

shockedsoshocked

Just bought a Heart Rate monitor after deciding I need to do some more structured high intensity stuff, but I was wondering if people could help me out with heart rate zones. I see a lot of anagrams flying around (like FTP for instance) and stuff about different intensity zones but have no idea what they mean.

So basically....

What is FTP, and can I train this using HR?

What % does aerobic turn into an-aerobic?

What % heart rate is 1 hour TT pace considered to be? (I see this a lot)

What % heart rate constitutes being in the recovery zone?

There might be a few more i've missed out, so if you want to add one it's much appreciated. trying to get as much info as possible and work out a good regime.

Alex_Simmons/RST

ShockedSoShocked wrote:

What is FTP, and can I train this using HR?

Functional Threshold Power is the maximal average power you can produce in a well paced (quasi steady state) time trial like effort lasting ~ 1 hour.

Yes, you can use HR to help guide training to improve FTP / time trial power.

ShockedSoShocked wrote:

What % does aerobic turn into an-aerobic?

There is no either/or "switch" which says we are using purely aerobic or anaerobic energy production.

From a HR perspective, it is not measureable for various reasons, namely the HR response is way too slow to indicate efforts that are predominantly anaerobic in nature.

However it is common for slightly longer mostly aerobic efforts > 90-92% of Max HR to indicate some level of anaerobic contribution.

ShockedSoShocked wrote:

What % heart rate is 1 hour TT pace considered to be? (I see this a lot)

TT pace HR is what it is. Go and ride a TT to find out. It is not a single number but typically a range.

ShockedSoShocked wrote:

What % heart rate constitutes being in the recovery zone?

Anything less than 70% of max HR is pretty much recovery.

shockedsoshocked

So 1 hour TT pace and FTP is essentially the same?

Thanks for the tips so far anyway. Just off to try the "hour of power" workout as it sounds quite fun :twisted:

Bronzie

I always find this zone guide really helpful:
http://home.trainingpeaks.com/articles/ ... evels.aspx

The HR zones are a bit wooly (due to the variability of HR), so using perceived exertion might be a better bet.

shockedsoshocked

Bronzie wrote:

I always find this zone guide really helpful:
http://home.trainingpeaks.com/articles/ ... evels.aspx

The HR zones are a bit wooly (due to the variability of HR), so using perceived exertion might be a better bet.

Thanks for that one. Had a brief look and it looks very useful for what i'm after.

Alex_Simmons/RST

ShockedSoShocked wrote:

So 1 hour TT pace and FTP is essentially the same?

Yes, provided it was well paced.