Are you intense enough? - Page 3

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Wednesday, 21 April 2010 00:00

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Matter of the heart

Despite my opening thought that exercise intensity is under-monitored, heart rate monitors may be over-used, while not fully understood. What are the numbers that you use to set your training? Is heart rate max measured as 220-age or assessed by an exercise-specific max test? Do you monitor %age max HR or %age HR reserve? Did you learn about the heart rate zones from a credible source or was it from a popular article in the media focused on the virtues of fat burning?

If you are going to use a heart rate monitor, it is really important to know your actual maximum heart rate (HRmax). It can be hugely variable from one individual to the next.

It also doesn’t decrease by a beat per minute (bpm) for every year of natural age as the 220 minus your age formula would have us believe. A way of finding your max is to do a ramped VO2 max-type test to exhaustion or to exercise flat-out for two minutes, followed by a one minute rest and then another flat-out two minute bout, after a thorough 20+ minute warm-up. Complete the test in the discipline in which you will be training because HRmax will vary between running, cycling, swimming and paddling. You then need to use the appropriate HR zones based on the type of fitness that you aim to bolster – aerobic, anaerobic or lactate threshold.