Heart rate zone training is a way to measure your intensity level and maximize your workout time by working in a specific target heart rate zone. Whether you’re doing a kettlebell workout, cycling, or running, your heart rate indicates how hard you’re working.
What Are Heart Rate Zones?
Heart rate zone training is one effective way to measure the intensity of your workouts. The goal of heart rate zone training is to keep your heart rate within a certain range when you exercise. By staying within this range, you get the benefits aerobic exercise offers. Fall below the lower range of your heart rate zone and the intensity may be too low to offer substantial fitness benefits. If your heart rate goes above the upper end of your heart rate zone, you’re pushing too hard. Over time, exercising in this zone should help boost your aerobic capacity or cardiovascular fitness.
How do you know what heart rate zone is appropriate for you? You calculate it based on your age. The most popular way to do that is to use this formula:
220 – age = HRmax
You would subtract your age from 220 to give your maximal heart rate. Then you take percentages of your maximum heart rate to determine the upper and lower range of your heart rate zone.
One criticism of this formula is that it assumes maximal heart rate is the same for people at a given age. However, maximal heart rate can vary greatly from individual to individual within the same age group. So, fitness experts now recommend using the following formula called the Tanaka formula to calculate heart rate zone:
208 – (0.7 x age) = HRmax
There are other formulas for calculating maximum heart rate to determine heart rate zones, but these are two of the simpler formulas for calculating maximal heart rate.
After Calculating Maximal Heart Rate, Determine Your Heart Rate Zones
Once you know your maximum heart rate, multiply by a percentage to get your lower-end heart rate (LHR) and then repeat the process on the other end to get your upper-end heart rate (UER). The percentages you use will depend on your goal. If you’re trying to exercise in the fat-burning zone, multiply your maximum heart rate by 50% to get the lower heart rate limit and by 75% to get your upper heart rate limit.
For example, if your maximum heart rate is 170, multiply by 60% to get 102 for the low end and by 70% to get the upper-end value of 119. To stay in the fat-burning zone, you’d exercise at an intensity where your heart rate stays within this range. (102 to 119). Exercise feels comfortable in this zone. You’re burning fat but you’re at the low end of the intensity needed to improve your aerobic fitness.
For aerobic fitness, the percentages will be a bit different since you need to exercise a little harder to get cardiovascular benefits. An appropriate range would be 70-80% of your maximal heart rate. So, multiply your maximum heart rate by 70% for the low value and 80% for the upper value. Then, exercise at an intensity that keeps your heart rate in this range or zone.
For a heart rate of 170, the range would be:
170 X 60% = 119
170 X 80% = 136
So, to get cardiovascular benefits and improve your aerobic capacity, keep your heart range in this range. (119 to 136)
Is Heart Rate Zone Training Useful?
Using heart rate zones is an effective way to determine if you’re working hard enough to meet your goals, slacking off, or pushing too hard. The problem with heart rate zone training is you must stop and check your heart rate to determine whether you’re in the desired heart rate zone. The other option is to wear a fitness tracker or heart rate monitor, but they aren’t always as accurate as they should be.
Another problem with heart rate zone training is that some factors can affect how hard you must work to stay in your zone. These include dehydration, certain medications (particularly beta-blockers), overtraining, lack of sleep, and caffeine. For example, dehydration, overtraining, lack of sleep, and caffeine can elevate your heart rate during exercise, so you think you’re exercising in your heart rate zone, but your heart rate is falsely elevated due to outside factors.
Likewise, taking beta-blocker medications for blood pressure control slows heart rate during exercise, meaning you must work harder to get in your target heart rate zone and may have trouble doing so.
An Alternative to Heart Rate Zones
If you don’t have a heart rate monitor and don’t like checking your heart rate by hand, you can use the talk test to estimate how hard you’re exercising. The talk test is a good way to measure your exertion when doing aerobic training activities. It is easy to use and allows you to play an active role in monitoring exercise intensity. The talk test assesses your aerobic training level and measures how hard you are breathing based on the number of words you speak.
If you’re exercising at a low intensity, below the intensity you need to improve aerobic capacity, you can carry on a conversation easily. Your breathing and words are smooth and unlabored. You can even sing! As you increase the intensity into the aerobic zone, it becomes impossible to sing but you can still talk, although it’s harder to string multiple sentences together. If you’re exercising at a high intensity, it becomes difficult to speak in complete sentences since you have to gasp for air between words.
The Bottom Line
Using heart rate zones as a measure of exercise intensity is useful but has limitations. The formulas used for measuring maximum heart rate aren’t entirely accurate, and factors like dehydration, medications, and overtraining can affect heart rate during exercise. The talk test is a useful alternative, although it’s more subjective than heart rate zones. Heart rate zones and talk tests are not exact measures of exercise intensity but are still useful.
References:
- “Heart Rate Zones | Training Methodologies and More.” heartzones.com/heart-rate-training/heart-rate-zones/.
- “Target Heart Rates Chart | American Heart Association.” heart.org/en/healthy-living/fitness/fitness-basics/target-heart-rates.
- Foster C, Porcari JP, Anderson J, Paulson M, Smaczny D, Webber H, Doberstein ST, Udermann B. The talk test as a marker of exercise training intensity. J Cardiopulm Rehabil Prev. 2008 Jan-Feb;28(1):24-30; quiz 31-2. doi: 10.1097/01.HCR.0000311504.41775.78. PMID: 18277826.
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