Welcome to the July 2005 edition
of The Heart Zones e-Newsletter
copyright: Heart Zones, your source of heart rate training information
- There’s a New Way to Get Fit and Fitter
- Personal Success Story - My Training is Turning Around
- Out with the Old Formulas and In with the New Way
- What's the Difference Between these Two?
- Training 10 bpm Above Your Maximum Heart Rate
and...
- There is a New Training Formula
- Product Review - DASH! with the Timex Body Link System
- New Editor for Heart Zones E Newsletter
1. There’s a New Way to Get Fit and Fitter
There’s a new way to train. There’s a new way to measure fitness. There’s a new way to define it. There’s a new way to motivate individuals to get it.
THERE IS A NEW WAY is the theme for the fourth annual Heart Zones Conference October 14-16th and you are invited to Denver, Colorado to join to attend. The new way to training is to use the heart and the heart rate monitor, the power tools of metabolic and aerobic capacity testing to design your training plans and programs, and to use the power of technology to enhance your results. Come and learn more than how to use new technology such as metabolic carts to measure oxygen and caloric expenditure, web racing for virtual training and performance improvement, and using GPS-enabled devices that let you view workout altitude changes and more. Learn what the numbers mean to give you an advantage. If you are an athlete, fitness professional, PE teacher or want to ahead of the pack, do it the new way.
Take advantage of the early bird signup until August 1 and save!
2.Personal Success Story – My Training is Turning Around
“For the past several months I have been sitting on a weight plateau and now I have started to lose weight again. So, I wanted to give you the reasons and let you know that my training is turning around in a great way, and it is due in large part to the sum of a number of changes:
1. I have finally viewed Heart Zone’s videos on training and the information that I had previously read in three of your books finally really clicked.
2. I have gotten to really know how better to use my heart rate monitor and learn from the feedback.
3. I am doing the Heart Zones Team Danskin Training with Lynne Tapper in West Hartford, MA. The first time I've trained with a group, and it is going great. Also the first time I've trained with heart zones in mind even more than my times and distances. Duh!
I have come off of my weight plateau and started to lose again; I am eating well -- nutritionally, and to my satisfaction of hunger. Best of all, my attitude has shifted and I love training again.
Elizabeth DuBois Russo
The Heart Zones video series is available on the Heart Zones website and the titles and subjects that Elizabeth is referring to are as follows:
1.Heart Zones Basic: Part 1 $24.95 2.Heart Zones Basic: Part 2 $24.95 3.Sub Max Test: 2 By 10 $24.95 4.Testing and Measurements: Fitness Testing $24.95 5.Blue Jersey Cycling Basics $24.95 6. Web Special: Buy 2 Get 1 Free $49.95
Editor’s Note: We contacted Elizabeth and asked her if it was alright for our readers to contact her directly if they wanted to know more about the three changes that have resulted in her about the changes that she is making and she said “sure, ask the readers to contact me by email: elizabethrusso@sbcglobal.net”
The old way of doing cardiovascular workouts is to set a target training zone. In the old way you were instructed to set your zone based on your age. The old formula was created from research collected in 1938 when scientists simply didn’t know better. The formula became popularized in the 1950s and continues by many to be used as the foundation of aerobic training. The old wall charts that you used in PE classes or at your health club show the old “target training zone” (sorry, but that doesn’t exist either – it is a mythical zone). This chart shows that each year your get older by one year your maximum heart rate drops by one year. Sorry, this is simply wrong. Not true. Dead. Old.
The most popular arithmetic formula was the 220 – age = maximum heart rate.
“The formula has no scientific merit for use in exercise physiology and related fields (cycling, swimming, running, etc),” writes Robert A. Robergs and Roberto Landwehr (Journal of Exercise Physiology, May 2, 2002).
So, stop using any arithmetic formula. As the two University of New Mexico exercise scientist conclude, “The error (using any formula) is unacceptably large.”
Recommendation: Heart Zones recommends that you take the 8 different Sub-Max tests to estimate your maximum heart rate. There are two different packets:
1. Sub-Max Test packet – 8 different tests plus maximum heart rate and zones card
2. Fitness Test: How Fit Are You? Packet
Available for $10 each at the Heart Zones web store: www.heartzones.com/store
Trainers tend to use two terms as identical when in fact they are quite different.
Let’s dissect them each so you get the difference. A training plan is a schedule. A training plan lays out your workouts daily and weekly. For example, your plan calls for Monday: a 15 mile bike ride in Zone 3 to build your aerobic base. A training plan is one part of a training program. A training program is the big picture which includes a training plan. A training program sits on a foundation called a training system. This system is the methodology – in our case there are several of them such as the Heart Zones Trainingmax HR System and the Heart Zones TrainingAT System. A training program is comprehensive. A training program includes your diet, your support team (coaches, family, friends), your gear and equipment, your training environs, your training plan, and much more. To be successful in reaching your goal, use a great training plan but build a training program on a sound training methodology in a comprehensive way.
Every year, for my birthday, I like to ride 10 bpm over my maximum heart rate for an hour or more. You might think that this is impossible but it isn’t when you train the Old Way. For me the old formula of 220 bpm – my age (86) = maximum heart rate of 133 bpm. My maximum heart rate is 190 bpm running and 180 bpm cycling. I know. I field test it each year using the Heart Zones protocol. I have been testing it for the last 15 years – yes, I started doing maximum heart rate tests at the age of 71 years. It hasn’t changed a beat in all of those years. Today it is 190 bpm. In 1991 my maximum heart rate was 190 bpm. In 2005 my maximum heart rate is 190 bpm. My maximum heart rate hasn’t changed – at all.
To celebrate each birthday (and they get more precious as one approaches their 9th decade on this planet), I ride 10 bpm above my maximum heart rate prediction equation: 220-age – maximum heart rate. So, this next December 26th, my birth day you are invited along for a ride with me in my Pinkhouse in Sacramento. I average for an hour a heart rate 10 bpm over my arithmetic maximum heart rate of 220-87= 133 bpm plus 10 beats per minute – or 143 beats per minute. I ride for more than an hour at 143 bpm. For me that is 76% of my maximum heart rate – and that is easy Zone 3 for me. If I trained the old way I would be getting less fit each year because the old way says that as you get older you get worse. I don’t get worse because I train the new way.
There is a new training formula. The new formula divides the training prescription (protocol) into a three part formula. The old way of training is built around training in the “target heart rate zone”. The old way of training is sweat until you drop with no pain, no gain. The old way of training is to go without: without using your heart, without the right training formula, and without a training system that is individualized for you. The new way is to use a new training formula. The new formula is comprehensive and personalized to you and your life. The new training formula is the sum of metabolic fitness plus physical fitness plus emotional fitness or
New Training = metabolic fitness + physical + emotional fitness
The new way of training is to apply the Heart Zones Trainingmax HR System’s three parts. There are two ways to learn more about the New Training Formula:
1. Attend the Heart Zones Conference October 14-16th in Denver and get your fitness measured and develop the new training program that includes the three parts and/or
2. Read the three best-selling books from Heart Zones that put the three parts of the formula together (and we have bundled them together for you):
New Training Formula
Companion Book Titles
Physical Fitness
Heart Zones Training
$10.95
Emotional Fitness
Health in a Heartbeat
$18.95
Metabolic Fitness
Fit and Fat
$17.95
The New Way to Train
Buy titles individually
$47.85
Bundled Together : Web Special:
$34.95
Save $13
7. Product Review - DASH! with the Timex Body Link System
The latest book from Heart Zones and Timex titled DASH! The Guide to Distance and Speed And Heart rate (Fall 2005) is more than a book on how to run, bike, swim, or do almost any sport faster, further, and with more heart. It takes training tools like heart rate monitors, GPS-driven distance monitors, and speed monitors and gives them true value. By enhancing their value, athletes and trainers for the first time have a dashboard of constant feedback data to help them train to achieve their goals. Snag a Timex Body Link System ($299 from Timex, on sale at Heart Zones web store for $239) and start training the new way. Using it to measure your pace running or speed on a bike makes it a cool tool. Using it as part of the DASH! Training system converts it into a power tool. The digital device is downloadable when you add to it the companion trackers data recorder which sucks up the digital packets and stores the info for latter retrieval. The power tool is available now but look for the training book this fall. (http://www.heartzones.com/store).
Everyone at Heart Zones (including the subscribers) want to extend their appreciation to Jessica Menendez, the former Heart Zones E Newsletter editor, for her years of service as the editor. Replacing Jessica is a team of Heart Zones Partners and associates who take on the responsibility as the contributing editors.
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copyright: Heart Zones
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The Heart Zones e-Newsletter is a Heart Zones publication
Publisher: Sally Edwards, the Head Heart
Editor in Chief: Jessica Menendez, the Head Editor
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