HR Zones

MartinGT
MartinGT Posts: 475
edited January 2014 in Training, fitness and health
I am doing the trainerroad thing at the moment and loving it. Working with power is great.

However, I am not fortunate enough to have a power meter when I am out on the road. I use a Garmin 500 and have always in the past worked on HR zones.

I would like to if at all possible make sure my zones are accurate enough. I have looked on the net and the zone calculators seem to be a bit generic.

My most recent ramp test, my Max HR when I did a ramp test was 186. When I did a similar one in the summer last year I hit 192, so a little off.

The calculators off the net I have used and on some rides I am apparently blowing out of my ring, when in fact it was a steady ride.

At the moment I have the following zones on Strava, do these look about right?
Z1 - 0-146
Z2 - 146-155
Z3 - 155-168
Z4 - 168 - 180
Z5 - 180+

I have tried looking at this from TrainingPeaks and just got confused :/

Comments

  • meursault
    meursault Posts: 1,433
    Quick guide here

    http://www.trainingbible.com/joesblog/2009/11/quick-guide-to-setting-zones.html
    Superstition sets the whole world in flames; philosophy quenches them.

    Voltaire
  • ai_1
    ai_1 Posts: 3,060
    Bear in mind that while zones are useful for defining training levels, etc your body isn't quite so precise. It's not like a switch is thrown when your HR goes up a beat and moves from Z2 to Z3. I think it's eaasy to get obsessive about the exact numbers you're using but in reality it's probably not that critical. Any HR figures you come up with will be ballpark numbers and there will be significant differences in what power/effort they correspond to from one day to the next depending on nutrition, sleep, condition, temperature/humidity, air pressure, alcohol consumption, illness, etc, etc, etc.....
  • dw300
    dw300 Posts: 1,642
    I'm always in the zone .. yeeeaaaaaaahhhhh!
    All the above is just advice .. you can do whatever the f*ck you wana do!
    Bike Radar Strava Club
    The Northern Ireland Thread
  • Ailsabob
    Ailsabob Posts: 23
    I'm baffled now I've seen the above link to a zone calculator.
    I've been doing British Cycling sportive training plan for last few weeks.
    That includes at Threshold Test, in which I scored an average heart rate of 175 (I'm 41 by the way).
    When I crunch that through their calculator, it gives me the following:

    1. Active Recovery <119
    2. Endurance 119-145
    3. Tempo 145-164
    4. Threshold 164-183
    5. VO2 Max 183-211

    However, when I plug my 175 figure into the link from this discussion thread, it comes up with wildly different figures. Now I'm left wondering if my zones are totally up the spout, and I haven't been working myself hard enough !

    Any advice would be gratefully received. Sorry for hijacking thread somewhat, but i didn't feel it appropriate to start a new one.
    Cheers,
  • Ailsabob
    Ailsabob Posts: 23
    MartinGT wrote:
    I have tried looking at this from TrainingPeaks and just got confused :/

    Ha, these match the British cycling figures for HR Zones....
  • wavefront
    wavefront Posts: 397
    Ailsabob wrote:
    MartinGT wrote:
    I have tried looking at this from TrainingPeaks and just got confused :/

    Ha, these match the British cycling figures for HR Zones....

    Yup, there are quite a few numbers out there for setting zones, with Friel's and Coggan's being quite popular - Seems to be that the BC website uses Coggan's zones. They are different, but like others have said, there isn't a 'switch' between zones, it probably quite progressive from one to the other so whichever you use, if as long as you set your zones using the LTHR test, I think you'll be ok. Coggans seems to have a lower zones for actrec, and endurance, so if you are doing Z1/Z2 rides his will be easier (or harder if you can't go slow!!)

    I'd been Joe Friels HR zones last year, but then started to use a power meter too, and I set my zones (Power and HR) to Coggans suggestions. However, I found it impossible to match the zones - ie I'd be in Z2 for power, and another for HR. I thought I'd try Friels HR zones again, and bang - my HR and Power zones now correlate pretty well.
    MartinGT wrote:
    My most recent ramp test, my Max HR when I did a ramp test was 186. When I did a similar one in the summer last year I hit 192, so a little off.

    At the moment I have the following zones on Strava, do these look about right?
    Z1 - 0-146
    Z2 - 146-155
    Z3 - 155-168
    Z4 - 168 - 180
    Z5 - 180+

    Martin, have you done an LTHR test, rather than a ramp test? Have a look at

    http://www.joefrielsblog.com/2011/04/de ... -lthr.html

    and once you have your LTHR number, you can use the percentages that Coggan or Friel recommend to determine actual values for Z1-Z5+. A few people say that LTHR sits about 20bpm below max, so if you were to use that then your zones seem a touch high, but a test is a more reliable way to go about it. Just make sure you're not fatigued or ill which could have a bearing on your results.

    HTH.

Categories