Heart rate monitors - worth it?

starbuck

I'm going to start a new training/diet regime so I can a: lose weight and b: increase my endurance so I can hit my century by spring next year (my normal maximum rides are between 50 and 60 miles, but I struggle with energy/pace after about 40 odd - I know losing weight and getting fitter will help with this).

How much of a difference do heart rate monitors make to training? Can they help with pacing (by staying within a certain zone)? What other differences do they make?

Basically, I want to give myself the best chance possible of achieving my goals and am looking at anything that will help.

sloppyschleckonds

Have you considered getting a power meter?

Remarkable

It with help with gauging/ confirming your effort, definitely. (Especially if you do any sort of training on a turbo.) Some professional riders prefer to train without power meters and rely solely on heart rate.

The best 'upgrade' you can buy for your bike riding in my opinion.

ut_och_cykla

Useful tool if used sensibly.It will help you take it easy when you should, and work harder when you should, but it is only a guide to your effort - HR can be affected by many factors - heat/sleep/food eaten etc but once you know your body a HRm can be useful. Best use is to use it in conjunction with a ramp test or similar (done at home on trainer or at a place that will test and measure your blood lactate) so you know your own personal zones. Going by percentage of max HR can be misleading as can 'guesstimating' max HR. I'm 53 and my guesstimate max is 220-53 =163 with my LT 85% being 141. In actual fact my max is 186! and my LT as measured is 88% giving a figure of 163. I f I trained to the first lower figure I would be going backwards!

ric/rstsport

starbuck wrote:

I'm going to start a new training/diet regime so I can a: lose weight and b: increase my endurance so I can hit my century by spring next year (my normal maximum rides are between 50 and 60 miles, but I struggle with energy/pace after about 40 odd - I know losing weight and getting fitter will help with this).

How much of a difference do heart rate monitors make to training? Can they help with pacing (by staying within a certain zone)? What other differences do they make?

Basically, I want to give myself the best chance possible of achieving my goals and am looking at anything that will help.

losing weight and getting fit are really important, and good goals.

Heart rate monitors can be useful to try and give you an approximate idea of your workrate. However, it's important to note that they don't give specifics -- this is because heart rate can vary at a given intensity (power output) and because heart rate is only one part of the 'equation'. When we measure heart rate we're just looking at how fast the heart is beating. It doesn't tell you how much your heart pumps out per beat (the stroke volume) or the total amount of blood being moved out (cardiac output).

They give an approx idea on how hard you're working, but can't be used for pacing as they're not sensitive enough (you'd need power for that).

Have you thought about coaching or training plans to help you best achieve your goals? Ourselves and others post here who offer coaching or training plans. These are likely to give you the best chance of achieving your goals in the shortest time.

Ric

BigFatBloke

starbuck wrote:

I'm going to start a new training/diet regime so I can a: lose weight and b: increase my endurance so I can hit my century by spring next year (my normal maximum rides are between 50 and 60 miles, but I struggle with energy/pace after about 40 odd - I know losing weight and getting fitter will help with this).

How much of a difference do heart rate monitors make to training? Can they help with pacing (by staying within a certain zone)? What other differences do they make?

Basically, I want to give myself the best chance possible of achieving my goals and am looking at anything that will help.

I wouldn't bother with heart rate.

Concentrate on how your legs feel and how your breathing feels. Learn how hard you can push for 20 minutes or an hour. Learn how hard you can go for 3 minutes or 10 minutes, 20 minutes an hour. Learn what various efforts feel like. When you are used to all the sensations you feel and you are confident you know how long you can hold certain efforts you can then decide if you want to start using power to measure your actual output and use software to track and analyse your training.

Some find using power helps them get to grips with feel, but in my opinion if you start using power to tell you what your effort is you can become dependent upon it. Others would not agree.

Feel is always king. Feel will tell you if you can carry on or need to slow down or could push harder. Power will allow you to measure accurately whatever the power is. Heart rate only gives you a very rough idea of the overall effort you are making. It measures beats per minute, not stroke volume, so it does not tell you the total output. Interpreting heart rate alongside power is therefore inherently complicated and liable to be extremely misleading. It is art not science.

Heart rate alone can be used only as a very rough guide to intensity of effort due to it only measuring rate and not volume. Many factors influence heart rate which I will not list here.

Feel is always number one, in the white heat of competition only feel can tell you what you can or can't do. Just because your past most recently tested best average power for 60 minutes, (Functional Threshold Power - FTP), is say 300 watts does not mean that today you can't do more or less.

Monitoring power or heart rate can have technical problems (I won't go into them here). Feel is always there and you should be confident in trusting it. Heart rate and power might be reading high or low or there may be no signal. You should have the confidence to override heart rate and or power if you feel you are capable of pushing harder or you are unable to reach your normal numbers.

"If it feels hard it is hard", who said that?

sloppyschleckonds

BigFatBloke wrote:

"If it feels hard it is hard", who said that?

Hi Trev

Was it Delia Smith?