TRAINING HEART RATE NOT TARGET HEART RATE

Busting some myths is harder than others. Busting the target heart rate theory is more difficult than keeping off the twenty pounds from the last diet. Few succeed at keeping the weight off, but we’ll take a shot at target heart rates anyway.

The target heart rate zone is generally described as 70%-85% of your maximum heart rate. This is the standard training zone or aerobic exercise prescription that is recommended by most professionals. The purpose of this one zone is an attempt to use important physiological criteria to set safe, simple, and effective training load dosages of exercise. The problem is having only that one zone. It still doesn’t focus on or support benefits of Zone 1 and Zone 2 or Zone 4 and Zone 5.

If I followed the age predicted formula, I wouldn’t be able to run, I’d just have to walk to be able to stay at the low 120 bpm edge of the contrived target zone, and I would not get enough exercise for my goals. I would be able to run at 146 bpm, but that pace is so easy for me that it’s like being on cruise-control. I would be training too low to meet my racing objectives, and I would be terribly unhappy and unsatisfied. I’d probably quit. The error in all of the formulas is just too great and is simply unacceptable to use any formula.

One of the only times that it is fun to have an inaccurate age-predicted maximum heart rate is when I workout on a cardiovascular machine that is heart rate programmed and presets my zones for me if I give it my age. Because of the huge error in the arithmetic formula, I get to enter my age as 33 years old so it will set my zones correctly for my true maximum heart rate.

When training at an athletic club in a Chicago suburb last year, I was on a cardio-machine called the “Cross Trainer.” The woman on the Cross Trainer next to me was in her mid-thirties and her control panel showed a heart rate reading of 195 bpm. She was working hard but not hurting herself. The heart rate number was flashing to indicate she was out of her machine-set target heart rate. I asked her how she felt about that large a heart rate number. She said, with great trepidation, “I am really, really worried that I am training too hard. But this is comfortable for me, and I don’t know what else to do but do a workout that feels like I am accomplishing something and ignore the heart rate number.” Clearly, she had a high true maximum heart rate, and the age-predicted formula had failed her as it had failed me.

The benefits of exercising below 70% of your maximum heart rate are substantial. It is simple to understand why so few people have been successful at exercising particularly in the one zone – 70%-85% range – they haven’t been told the correct information. Being able to get into a zone that is 70-85% maximum heart rate is extremely difficult for the unfit to accomplish. It is too high and too strenuous, so why exercise when you can’t do it anyway?

For people who are fit, the single zone is simply too easy. It may seem odd to people struggling to get into the zone, but one of the most common complaints at health clubs is, “I’ve been taking aerobics for one year – or two or three – and nothing is happening.” It’s also a complaint I hear from joggers, who are working hard, but not getting the results they anticipated.

The problem is the same for both groups: there is no such thing as one target heart rate range. Do you want the truth? There are multiple zones that provide multiple benefits – not one zone for everyone. There are at least five different max zones, and they are clearly identifiable by their physiological framework.The five zones are part of a continuum, beginning with the health zones, passing through the middle, fitness zone, and ranging all the way up to the performance zones.