HEART RATE TRAINING
HEART RATE TRAINING
I’m a big advocate of training with a heart rate monitor, not only to make sure you stay in the best heart rate zone for your desired fat-loss & Conditioning goals but also to track calories burned, keep tabs on your overall heart health and know your body’s signs when its best to back it down and get proper rest & recovery.
Why wouldn’t you want to get the most out of your time in the gym or benefit the most during your cardio session?
I know I sure do!
Time is your most precious commodity! You can’t buy it, save it or get it back. So, your training should be intense and focused on the muscles targeted during your workout.
Metabolic Training is a hybrid of strength training and cardio conditioning rolled into one and can be highly effective in sculpting a lean and athletic physique.
So, what Heart Rate Zones should you be focused on achieving?
For decades, athletes have used maximum heart rate as a way to figure out which zones they should be training in. The most common wisdom was to subtract your age from 220, and—voilà! - You had your max HR a figure that represented the greatest number of beats per minute your heart can achieve. Then, from that number, you could allegedly calculate your recovery, Fat Burning, lactate threshold, and anaerobic heart-rate training zones. However, it’s a rudimentary system (It’s been the standard for years but there are a lot of variables) that can throw off your max HR, says Cherie Miner, MD, a sports medicine physician and age-group Ironman athlete at Andrews Sports Medicine and Orthopedic Center. She adds that how fit you are, how hot it is, and how much stress you’re under can all affect your max HR at any given time.
Like the 220-minus-age rule, there are a lot of other myths surrounding max HR. Here, we debunk the worst of them.
IF YOU GO OVER YOUR MAX HR, YOUR HEART EXPLODES
You’ve got to admit, this would be equally horrifying and badass if true. Rest easy, though—it won’t happen.
“Your heart gets to the point where it can’t eject blood effectively enough; where it’s not productive anymore,” When this happens, self-preservation kicks in and you slow down. If you're in a race, that means you'll either just dropped or toss your cookies.
YOUR MAX HR IS THE SAME FOR EVERYONE YOUR AGE
That’s what the old-school formulas assume, it’s much more complicated than that. Max HR is largely un-trainable, and determined by genetics—some of us have hearts tuned like humming birds' while others have the slow ‘n steady type.
“But it’s not an indication of performance. "If your max is 200 and someone else’s is 190, it doesn’t mean one of you is the better athlete."
It's good to remember that everyone’s max HR does drop as they age—but again, that doesn’t mean you’re losing fitness. Regular training and good nutrition will affect performance more than the fact that your max HR is now slightly lower than it was three years ago. In reality, it’s not your max HR that determines your fitness level: Being able to hold your max HR for longer and longer sessions is what’s key.
HEART RATE IS A MEASUREMENT OF HOW HARD YOU ARE WORKING
Heart rate is a reaction to work being done, not a measurement of actual work. For example, if you ratchet yourself up to 200 watts for three minutes, for the first minute, your heart may tick along at 170bpm; by minute two it may be at 180; and by minute three you could be pushing 189. But you’re doing the same amount of work the whole time—200 watts.
If you were to ride for three minutes with the intention of maintaining the same heart rate, things would look different. Say you ramped up to 180bpm to start— you might ride at 200 watts for the first minute, but you’d likely have to drop your watts to sustain that heart rate for minutes two and three.
“There are a lot of grey areas,” with heart rate, adding that being overheated, under-fueled, or even just hopped up on caffeine will throw your heart rate numbers off for the day.
Furthermore, the number displayed by your heart rate monitor or the screen on a gym treadmill may not be accurate. Sure, using a heart rate monitor is certainly more accurate than the 220-age formula, but that since these devices take measurements every few seconds, they're probably not dead-on. If you really want to know your true max heart rate.
IF I’M NOT WORKING AT MY MAX HR, I’M NOT WORKING HARD ENOUGH
Here’s your license to chill. Max heart-rate workouts should be done sparingly, says Miner, since the ultra-high intensity can lead to injuries, extreme fatigue, and other symptoms of over training Plus, there’s merit to working in many different heart-rate zones—from increasing your base fitness with low-intensity sessions to pushing the boundaries at your lactate threshold, and even tipping into some anaerobic work.
If you only have two speeds—hard and OMG hard—you’re doing yourself a disservice.
YOUR MAX HR IS THE SAME FOR ALL SPORTS
You're not paranoid: Your max for weight training really may be different than your max for cycling. Again, this is indicative of how variable heart rate is. Things that are load bearing—like weights—will generally push your heart rate higher, since you have to do more work to overcome gravity. Cycling, because it has the mechanical assist of bike wheels, will generally produce a lower max heart rate. And swimming, which happens in a pool with zero-impact, may be lower still: Since the water is keeping you cool, heat will be less of a factor in raising your HR.
HEART RATE ZONES
1. The Fat Burning Zone — 50% to 60% of MHR — as the name says, training in this zone is ideal for drawing energy from fat cells by being low in intensity, but long in duration.
2. The Energy Efficient or Recovery Zone — 60% to 70% of MHR — training in this zone develops basic endurance and aerobic capacity, it’s ideal for recovery intervals.
3. The Aerobic Zone — 70% to 80% of MHR — training in this zone develops and improves cardiovascular system, especially the body’s ability to transport oxygen to the working muscles, and CO2 away from them.
4. The Anaerobic Zone — 80% to 90% of MHR — training in this zone will develop your lactic acid system: glycogen stored in the muscle is predominantly used as the source of energy, and a by-product of burning glycogen is lactic acid. A point at which the body can no longer remove the lactic acid from the working muscles is your anaerobic threshold. It is possible to train your body to delay the anaerobic threshold and increase the tolerance to lactic acid.
5. The Red Line Zone — 90% to 100% of MHR — training in this zone is possible only for short periods of time. It’s ideal for developing speed by working out fast twitching muscle fibers through sprint intervals.
METABOLIC TRAINING ZONE
My Metabolic365 Training workouts combines multi heart rate zone’s in order to burn the most amount of calories in the shortest period of time!
Staying above the Fat burning zone on the low end (110-115Bpm) for me personally and hitting the Aerobic Zone (150-160bpm) during the peak excursion during sets. This is True HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training at its finest!
“Train insane of remain the same”, Mentality”!
To train by those intensity zones, you need a constant feedback on your heart rate, which you get by wearing a monitor. It consists of a belt-like strap, which fastens around your chest and sends data to a display on your watch, or a smartphone.
