What are heart rate zones and how can you incorporate them into your exercise program?

If you spend quite a lot of time browsing fitness content on the Internet, you can have come across the concept of heart rate zones. Heart rate zone training has grow to be increasingly popular in recent times, due partly to the event of wearable technology that, amongst other things, allows for simple heart rate tracking.

Heart rate zones reflect different intensity levels during aerobic exercise. Most often, they are based on a percentage of your maximum heart rate, which is the best variety of beats your heart can make per minute.

But what are different heart rate zones and how can you use these zones to optimize your training?

Three-zone model

Although there are several models that describe heart rate zones, the preferred model within the scientific literature is the heart rate zone model three-zone modelwhere zones can be divided into the next categories:

• zone 1: 55%–82% of your maximum heart rate

• zone 2: 82%-87% of your maximum heart rate

• zone 3: 87%-97% of your maximum heart rate.

If you’re unsure what your maximum heart rate is, you can calculate it with that is the equation: 208 – (0.7 × age in years). For example, I’m 32 years old. 208 – (0.7 x 32) = 185.6, so my expected maximum heart rate is roughly 186 beats per minute.

There are also other models used to explain heart rate zones, e.g five-zone model (because the name suggests, this one has five distinct zones). These models they largely describe the identical thing and can most frequently be used interchangeably.

What do each zone cover?

Three zones are centered across the person lactate thresholdwhich describes the purpose at which exercise intensity changes from predominantly aerobic to predominantly anaerobic.

Aerobic exercise uses oxygen to assist our muscles work, ensuring that we can proceed for long periods of time without fatigue. However, anaerobic exercise uses stored energy to fuel exercise. Anaerobic exercise also causes the build-up of metabolic waste products (akin to lactate) which increases fatigue, which suggests we can only produce energy anaerobically for brief periods of time.

On average, your lactate threshold tends to fluctuate 85% of your maximum heart ratealthough this varies from individual to individual and this stands out as the case higher in athletes.

In the three-zone model, each zone is loosely described certainly one of three forms of training.

Zone 1 means high-volume, low-intensity exercise, normally performed for a very long time and at a simple pace well below the lactate threshold. Examples include jogging or cycling at a leisurely pace.

Zone 2 is threshold training, also generally known as tempo training, a way of moderate-intensity training performed for a moderate duration at (or near) lactate threshold. This might be running, rowing or cycling at a speed that makes it difficult to say complete sentences.

Zone 3 mainly describes high-intensity interval training methods that are performed for a shorter duration and at an intensity above the lactate threshold. For example, any circuit workout where you exercise hard for 30 seconds and then rest for 30 seconds could be zone 3.

Keeping your balance

To maximize endurance performance, you have to strike a balance between doing enough training to create positive change while avoiding overtraining, injury, and burnout.

Although zone 3 is taken into account to supply the best improvements maximum oxygen uptake – among the best predictors of endurance and overall health – it’s also essentially the most tiring. This means you can only achieve this much of the exercise before it becomes an excessive amount of.

Training in numerous heart rate zones improves barely different physiological propertiesand so by spending time in each zone, you ensure various advantages for performance and health.

So how much time should you spend in each zone?

Very elite endurance athletesincluding runners, rowers and even cross-country skiers, spend most of their training (about 80%) in zone 1 and divide the remaining between zones 2 and 3.

Because elite endurance athletes train quite a bit, most of their training have to be done in zone 1 or they risk injury and burnout. For example, some runners accumulate over 250 kilometers every weekwhich couldn’t be recovered if it were all carried out in zone 2 or 3.

Of course, most individuals are not skilled athletes. The World Health ORganisation recommends that adults aim for 150–300 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise per week or 75–150 minutes of vigorous-intensity exercise per week.

If you take a look at it within the context of heart rate zones, you might consider training in zone 1 as moderate intensity and zones 2 and 3 as vigorous intensity. You can then use heart rate zones to make sure that you’re exercising inside these guidelines.

What happens if I haven’t got a heart rate monitor?

If you haven’t got access to a heart rate monitor, it does not imply you can’t use heart rate zones to coach.

The three heart rate zones discussed in this text can even be prescribed by feel using an easy method 10-point scalewhere 0 means no effort and 10 means the utmost effort you can put in.

In this method, zone 1 corresponds to a worth of 4 or less out of 10, zone 2 is 4.5 to six.5 out of 10, and zone 3 is 7 or more out of 10.

Heart rate zones are not an ideal measure of exercise intensity, but they can be a useful gizmo. And if you don’t desire to fret about heart rate zones in any respect, that is fantastic too. The most vital thing is to simply keep moving.