Know your Training Heart Rate (THR)

Thursday, March 4, 2010

It was an inside day again, though the forecast is good and I hope to have the bike on the road over the weekend. Amazingly, I’m having very little soreness from my 46-minute run yesterday. There are two reasons for this, I’m thinking. One is I’m doing so much of the run on a soft surface – snow – and not getting the normal impact soreness that I would get from running the roads. The other is, hey, I’m getting in better shape!

Anyway, I hit the trainer for another tedious 60-minute ride. I distracted myself with the movie ‘Milk’ which I will finish on tomorrow’s ride. I pushed segments of the ride again because I know it’s getting a little to easy for me and I want my THR up around 140 for parts of the ride. I’m always listing my training heart rate and for those of you unfamiliar with the concept, I’ve included my calculation. If you don’t want to do the math, follow the link in the upper right hand corner of this page: www.exrx.net. When you get to their home page, look along the left side for ‘fitness calculator’ and click on that. From there, click on ‘target heart rate’ and plug in your age and the percentage ranges within which you want to work. I use 70 to 85% for mine.

Training Heart Rate (THR)

There are a number of ways to get your training heart rate and it’s a very important number with which to become familiar if you are looking to get the most from your exercise routine. Personally, I go with the easy method which calculates this way:

Starting number: 220
Subtract age: -54

Maximum Heart Rate (MHR) : 166

In theory, this would be the number over which I could not get my heart while exercising and that, when doing my aerobic workout – biking, running, swimming, rowing and so on – I should keep my heart at between 60-85% of this number. Here’s that calculation:

Maximum Heart Rate (MHR): 166 x 60% = 96. 166 x 85% = 144

So – my training zone is 96 to 144 beats per minute, which is quite a range. I tend to keep it a lot closer to 144 than 96 and that’s because I want to burn as many calories as I can during the workout and get as much improvement in performance, too. Both of these things happen at the higher level.

To know how you’re doing without wearing a heart monitor requires that you check your heart rate during exercise periodically. I take it on the carotid artery on the right side of my neck and just under the jaw. I do it there so I can count the beats and easily read my workout watch while counting. I take a 10-second count, which even if you stop is almost exactly what it was while you were exercising if you get it as soon as you stop. I determine the range I want to be in by dividing my 1-minute goal heart rate numbers by 6 to account for the fact that I’m taking a 10-second count. For me, that means keeping my 10-second count between 16 and 24. Those are the only numbers I need to remember.

Now – the whole estimation can be off because it’s, well, an estimation. I know I can get my heart rate higher than 166. I’ve measured it higher when climbing peaks or running all-out efforts. Still, it’s close and it works for me. Normally, I’m not checking constantly because experience has taught me to know my THR by how I’m breathing and feeling. With runners I coach, I offer the following advice for determining effort in a workout:

Easy workout conversation: “Hey John, this is a wuss workout. What’s the big deal? I could run and talk all day long.”

Medium workout conversation: “Hey John, this workout is …(pause for breath)…a little tougher than the one…(pause for breath) …we did the other day.”

Hard workout conversation: “Hey ^%^$* (panting for 10 seconds), this %$%# workout (panting another 10 seconds) really *&^%%* sucks (bending over and puking).

When doing an aerobic workout, most of your training should be in the easy to medium range. The hard workout is for interval training and can’t be done for long periods of time. Get to know your effort by checking your pulse and then make the conscious decision to work out at the level the makes the most sense to achieving your fitness related goals.

Bike duration: 60 minutes.

Training Heart Rate: 125 bpm

Calories burned during workout: 900