Here is my attempt to answer some of the HR training questions. I'm going to start broadly then answer questions or go into more detail later.
The 1st thing you need to determine are your zones. The Book I read "Total Heart Rate Training" has you use Perceived Exertion to locate your "lactate threshold".
Once you've done that there are charts for each event as each have different ranges because of the differences in the exercise. The Zones are 1-4 then 5a, 5b, 5c. the bottom of 5a is your lactate threshold.
Next you want to look at the duration of the event for which you are training. There you will see which zone should be your race day zone. (not training zone but what you want to maintain on race day). I will include what I believe are my HR Zones for Running based on 188 LT.
>12 hours Zone 1 <160 "Active Recovery Zone"
8-12 hours Zone 2 160-170 "Aerobic Threshold"
3-8 hours Zone 3 171-179 "Tempo"
1-3 hours Zone 4 180-187 "Sub Lactate Threshold"
20 min - 1 hour Zone 5a 188-191 "Lactate Threshold"
2-20 min Zone 5b 192-199 "Aerobic Capacity"
<2 min Zone 5c 200+ "Anaerobic Capacity"
1 Active Recovery: If you are in good shape a workout in Zone 1 promotes recovery more than a day off
2 Aerobic Threshold: Best way to improve aerobic function because of the easy recovery time from this type of workout.
3 Tempo: This zone is useful mostly to people who's events are spent at this rate as it's very similar to zone 2 but requires more recovery time.
4 SubLactate Threshold: Effective zone for improving acid tolerance. Intervals of 6-12 minutes with 1/4 of that time recovering. Keeping the Workout under 60 minutes helps keep recovery time at a minimum.
5a Lactate Threshold: Very similar to zone 4 with even more caution about workout time and recovery as this level creates acid very quickly.
5b Aerobic Capacity: Max Aerobic Capacity, you can only hold this for a few minutes. Interval training of 3 min 5b / 3 min recovery for 15 minutes would be a typical workout. Recovery time would increase greatly going much longer than this. (infrequent zone for endurance events)
5c Anerobic Capacity: You can only hold this for a minute at best. This is an area used most by Sprinters and Cyclists which have a sprint at the end of the event to determine the winner.
More later. I've got to get my workout in!
2 comments:
That looks like some good information and like a good explanation of the different zones. For people our age, though, we may never reach some of the 5a-c zones. So everyhing should be adjusted based on your max heart rate. Max HR is a statistical prediction too. So if we are all almost 40 and the equation is 200-age, 180-183 is likely a HRmax for us. Some will be higher, some lower. Standard deviation is 13bpm. Many will use those same zones but as a percentage of max HR (i.e.zone 1 80%, zone 2 85% etc.)In zone 5, theoretically you can go higher that maxHR since the intensity is so high.For example, HR levels off at max values but itensity can still increase some.
OK. I've probably got my chart wrong. I shouldn't be basing my VT at 188. It's probably lower than that. I'll write up the treadmill test this guy suggests. It helps you find your VT or LT. I'll try to do the test tomorrow night and adjust the values accordingly.
I do find it amazing how different people's HR is. This weekend we did a bike ride and my HR average was around 130. Genine's was around 104. LOL. Ah well it's all relative.
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