HEART RATE ZONES

Understanding what you’re doing and what you’re aiming for will help you reach your targets accurately and become fitter, faster, stronger…. faster!!!

Training within specific Heart Rate Zones is a way to measure and manipulate how we’re training and work towards a specific and desired outcome.

If we’re training for fitness, but we only work within a low end range of what our heart and lungs can output, then we’re not creating a stimulus or stressor on the body suitable to elevate the heart rate and create a need for the body to adapt to this new demand and gradually become accustomed to it. This is essentially what improving fitness is. A stressor is applied, the body adapts to it, then next time it finds it easier. It’s much more complex than that of course and it can be applied to strength, building muscle, speed, fat loss etc. It’s the body’s way of ‘learning’. Working within set heart rate zones has proven to produce much greater results among athletes over time.

There are five Heart Rate levels/zones:

Zone 1 (Warm up)  60% - This is a relaxed, easy pace, breathing is controlled and rhythmic, but higher than at complete rest.

Zone 2 (Easy) 70% - This is comfortable, slightly harder breathing, but easy to hold a conversation. This is low level cardiovascular range and good as a recovery zone between harder sets.

Zone 3 (Aerobic) 80% - Moderate effort zone. It’s starting to get harder to hold a conversation at this point. In this zone you are at optimal cardiovascular training.

Zone 4 (Threshold) 90% - A hard effort zone, a much faster and harder effort than zone 3. Things are starting to feel uncomfortable here, breathing is fast and heavy. This is a good zone to build on anaerobic and threshold capacity and improve speed.

Zone 5 (Maximum) 100% - This is your highest possible effort. Usually extremely fast and unsustainable for long periods. This hits anaerobic conditioning, muscular endurance and improves strength and power.

Your training program will likely include different types of workouts with varying durations, frequencies and intensities. This variety and incremental change over the weeks and months is a very effective approach to training and will give you great performance results. If you have or can purchase a smart watch that monitors your HR this is a great place to start by bringing HR training into your routine.

There are a number of ways to calculate your MaxHR%. You can calculate roughly by age [220 - your age], use an online calculator or use an advanced manual calculation method (there are a few). Either way, your body will have it’s own version of which zone and range it is in based on your health, fitness and genetics (aside from your age/gender). So start with the basics and start looking at what you’re working towards, what level you’re training at, how you’re feeling in these zones and where could you perhaps apply more focus to improve your training outcomes, performance and goal results. 

Good luck! Train hard & Have Fun!!