Heart rate during training performance

This article is from # H.V.M.N

Right now, you're probably reading this article, pretty relaxed, functioning at a low resting heart rate—unless you are one of those crazy multi-taskers who can workout and learn simultaneously.

As you start to exercise, your heart beats faster to deliver enough oxygen and fuel to your working muscles. The harder you work, the faster it beats; at the same time your metabolism changes to support the rate of work. Heart rate is a great and highly individual biomarker; there's a strong relationship between heart rate and intensity, and it's easily measured (unlike metabolism). The number of times your heart beats per minute provides a wealth of information—time to take advantage of it.

Table of Contents

Exercise Intensity: The Key to Peak Performance and Health Benefits

Using Heart Rate to Measure Training Intensity

Get in the Zone

The Big Five HR Zones

 Zone 1: Warmup

Zone  2: Easy, Fat Burning Zone

Zone  3: Intermediate Zone, Where the Base is Built

Zone  4: Lactate Threshold Training, Where it Starts to Burn

Zone  5: VO2 Max Training

Calculating Heart Rate Zones

Applying the Karvonen formula to calculate HR zones based on desired intensity.

Zone Distribution: How Much Should You Train in Each?

HR Zone Training is Nuanced

As an easy way to quantify energy systems, exercise physiologists and coaches have developed what are now known as heart rate training zones: roughly defined ranges of heart rates (as a percent of max) where certain adaptations can be expected to occur. The goals of any workout can be expressed in terms of a training zone. You use these like a dashboard meters that show what's going on under the hood. With only a little effort, you can start to fine tune your training, targeting specifics to boost your adaptations and get the most bang for your buck...or your heart beat.

Exercise Intensity: The Key to Peak Performance and Health Benefits

Athletes can manipulate three key training variables: frequency, time (or duration), and intensity. Of these, exercise intensity is the most important for performance, weight loss, cardiovascular fitness, and health adaptations to exercise. Intensity is also important for a multitude of other reasons: measuring recovery, planning easy days, formulating a training plan, and meeting fitness goals.

Intensity governs outcome. One classic 1995 study showed the amount of time spent at a vigorous training intensity was associated with lower all-cause mortality.1 Time spent at a low training intensity showed no such correlation. The same may apply to athletes. How hard (or how easy) you spend your training time might be more important than what you spend that time doing.

But how do you know how hard to work?

Using Heart Rate to Measure Training Intensity

Intensity, in relation to exercise, can refer to speed, power, energy expenditure, perceived exertion, percent of lactate threshold, or heart rate. Each of these measures, in their own way, is a proxy for the amount of ATP (energy) our body converts to mechanical energy so we can run, bike, swim, or fight. Intensity measures how much energy we use to perform a certain task.

Heart rate is easy to measure, possibly the best understood and often, the most applied for athletes. HR corresponds perfectly with physiology; when measured during exercise, it can indicate coronary blood flow and myocardial oxygen consumption (how much energy your heart uses).2 Additionally, measuring HR is more accessible than power or speed, a more exact measurement than perceived exertion (RPE), and is highly reflective of your status on any one particular day. HR can change with illness, stress, and heck–even thinking about lunch.

Measuring HR during exercise to assess training intensity is the most well accepted and practical method for most athletes. Usually, all it requires is a heart rate monitor.

In addition to exercise intensity, HR can help measure recovery and monitor training load to avoid overtraining. Quantifying your training is just as important as nutrition, recovery, and mental prep. Without quantifying intensity, how do you expect to get better?

Perhaps most importantly, measuring HR during exercise is the best way to individualize training. Exercise based on HR intensity is all relative–your 80% is different than your running buddy’s 80%. Your target heart rate is specific to you, and your training program should be as well.

Get in the Zone

Glancing at a number of “beats per minute” on your heart rate monitor during a workout might not seem to hold any useful information. As a number alone, it doesn’t. What’s important is what your particular HR tells you about objective effort. Where are you in relation to your max capacity? Heart rate can tell you what energy systems you’re using during exercise, and accordingly, what adaptations you’ll get out of the workout.

When we say energy systems, we mean the three main pathways to generate energy during exercise. These are: the phosphagenic (ATP-PCr) system, the glycolytic system, and the oxidative system.

For max-intensity exercise (think, sprints or super heavy lifts that last under 15 seconds), we use the phosphagenic system to generate ATP. For high-intensity efforts lasting under two minutes, the glycolytic (anaerobic) system predominates. For all other aerobic-based efforts over two minutes, the oxidative system makes our energy through mitochondrial respiration. While we always use a combination of these systems, different exercise intensities will rely primarily on one system over the others to use metabolic substrates such as carbohydrates or fats for energy.

Zones were created to give athletes a vague idea of if they’re “in” or “out” of a certain adaptation or recovery window.

The theory goes: craft your training plan around the different zones to create an intelligent training program destined for success.

It is important to know that heart rate training zones are not identical for each athlete. They may vary widely among athletes due to individual variation in physiology, cardiovascular fitness, and even diet. Nor are training zones rigidly defined. Athletes aren’t zone switching robots, neatly switching between different zones. It’s more of a continuum.

Why use zones to train? Athletes don’t (and shouldn’t) train at the same intensity from day to day, workout to workout. Manipulating the most important variable (intensity) is crucial to boost your fitness level over time, avoid a plateau, and stay healthy.

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