Becoming IronAdam

How many of you feel comfortable with heart rate zones and what they mean? I know most of the serious athletes following this blog use some sort of heart rate monitor (i love my Garmin), and I’m curious how many of you use the zones that nearly all training books suggest. I want to uncover the mysteries around heart rate zones with you, so please help / correct any of the below comments.

Heart rate zones matter for the type of training (see training types in my earlier post) you’re trying to improve, whether its speed, force, endurance, etc… You want to spend time in the appropriate zone for different skills you’re working on, and several workouts take you from zone to zone to work to develop different types of fitness. The key first step in determining your zones is to figure out your max heart rate (MHR). You can spend a lot of money on a VO2 test, but how different could it be from plugging some values into the formulas found here. These formulas are:

MHR = 220 – Age (simple)

MHR = 206.3 – (0.711 × Age)

MHR = 217 – (0.85 x Age)

MHR = 206.9 – (0.67 x age)

After solving the formulas, I found my heart rate to be somewhere between 185 and 195, and I chose 190 as my max heart rate (i think Lance Armstrong’s tested near 210, which is nuts – learned that at the cadaver exhibit on the heart in LA).

Once you have your max heart rate, you can determine your lactate, or anaerobic, threshold, which is the rate at which your muscles release hydrogen ions into the blood stream, causing that burning feeling in your legs. Your body releases these faster then it processes them out. Your lactate threshold is about 90% of your maximum heart rate. For me, this is 90% * 190 = 171. Sidebar: interval training is meant to push your body past your lactate threshold for a brief moment, then give you recovery time so your blood can process the lactate out before starting the next interval.

Are you starting to see why these zones are important?

So having these two numbers is key. The next step requires looking up these zones in a heart rate table based on either your maximum heart rate or lactate threshold heart rate (different tables ask for different numbers). I use Joe Friel’s table in the triathlete’s training bible, and a description of his zones and figuring out this threshold is listed here. Here are my heart rate zone’s based on this info (running first, then cycling):

Zone 1-Recovery: 113-145, 112-139
Zone 2-Extensive endurance: 146-156, 140-152
Zone 3-Intensive endurance: 157-163, 163-160
Zone 4-Subthreshold: 164-170, 161-170
Zone 5a-Super threshold: 171-174, same for cycling
Zone 5b-Anaerobic capacity: 175-180, same for cycling
Zone 5c-power: 181-189, same for cycling

So I’ll use these zones to design my workouts, particularly my long runs (zone 1 and 2), my tempos (a mix of zones), and my intervals – pushing into zone 5.

Any questions? Comments? Feedback?