What's the best way to calculate my personal HR ranges?

mbrairton · Post by **mbrairton** » March 27th, 2006, 1:56 pm

I see a lot written about training plans that involve a certain number of days, distances, etc in certain HR ranges. Beyond 220-my age for max HR I have no idea how to correctly calculate my different ranges. Any guidance on how to calculate my ranges, and how many different ones I need to focus myself on? My immediate personal goal is to get a sub 7:00 2K. Thanks in advance for your thoughts & help.

jamesg · Post by **jamesg** » March 27th, 2006, 3:03 pm

Range is from minimum (take your pulse at rest) to maximum - if you have a HR monitor, see what you get by doing a step test. If you don't want to do a test, 205 - half age seems to be accurate enough.

The bands if I remember right are up to 70%, 80% and 85% of range and are called ut1, 2 and AT.

More details on the C2 UK Interactive

Citroen · Post by **Citroen** » March 27th, 2006, 7:37 pm

mbrairton wrote:I see a lot written about training plans that involve a certain number of days, distances, etc in certain HR ranges. Beyond 220-my age for max HR I have no idea how to correctly calculate my different ranges. Any guidance on how to calculate my ranges, and how many different ones I need to focus myself on? My immediate personal goal is to get a sub 7:00 2K. Thanks in advance for your thoughts & help.

I've found that a hard 30 min row at 20 stroke per minute pushes me to the bottom of my AT heart rate band and I stick there. That's about 155HR. My resting HR is around 50 and the peak I've seen on the erg is 186.

If I then feed that and my 2K PB into http://www.machars.net/ltb.xls it seems to come out about right.

The 30'R20 is approx. 70% of 2K PB pace. That AT value with your maxHR and restingHR gets you three points on the graph.

Godfried · Post by **Godfried** » March 28th, 2006, 2:35 pm

See the UK web site at physiological_tools.

MOKO · Post by **MOKO** » March 28th, 2006, 4:50 pm

I have been chasing my max heart rate for a week or so, I just bought a monitor.

My first try was a 2K that got it up to 177. Next day a 30? minute workout got it to 182. A couple days later a 20 minute workout got it to 184.

Last night I did the step test per the UK site, got it to 185. Next week I will try the step again ratcheting the steps one higher and go to failure (without question). At that point I believe my max will have been established. I expect near 185 will be it.

From there I will establish better heartrate training sessions. Cheers.

JimR · Post by **JimR** » March 28th, 2006, 6:24 pm

Any thoughts on whether using heart rate as a training guide makes sense???

There has been much discussion that HR is not as good a way to train as pace. Using HR to establish a starting point might be good but from there constantly pushing the pace down is the more common approach.

JimR

Porkchop · Post by **Porkchop** » March 28th, 2006, 9:10 pm

MOKO wrote:I have been chasing my max heart rate for a week or so, I just bought a monitor.

My first try was a 2K that got it up to 177. Next day a 30? minute workout got it to 182. A couple days later a 20 minute workout got it to 184.

Last night I did the step test per the UK site, got it to 185. Next week I will try the step again ratcheting the steps one higher and go to failure (without question). At that point I believe my max will have been established. I expect near 185 will be it.

From there I will establish better heartrate training sessions. Cheers.

Keep in mind that MHR will vary depending on the activity you engage in. On a bicycle (on a training stand), for example, my MHR is ~193, but on an erg it is lower, maybe 185 or so. If you want to set your training program by reference to heart rate, you should probably establish your MHR for the particular activity you are involved in. Your training program for rowing probably should be based on your observed MHR while erging rather than on a step test.

Citroen · Post by **Citroen** » March 29th, 2006, 4:50 am

Porkchop wrote:Your training program for rowing probably should be based on your observed MHR while erging rather than on a step test.

The step test being discussed here is done on an erg.
http://www.concept2.co.uk/guide/pdfs/tr ... ter_12.pdf

hjs · Post by **hjs** » March 29th, 2006, 5:43 am

JimR wrote:Any thoughts on whether using heart rate as a training guide makes sense???

There has been much discussion that HR is not as good a way to train as pace. Using HR to establish a starting point might be good but from there constantly pushing the pace down is the more common approach.

JimR

Hartrate and also your feel are the only way to go. Just training on pace is always ending in overtraining. Our body is no machine, therefore the hartrate is a fine way off monitoring it. Almost everybody trains to hard.

How many time do you see that someome wrights down: did a recorver row. at XXXXX and that was only a few second slower then there pb. Those people have lots to learn.
A real recover training os only meant to get the blood flowing a bit and the pace has to be very relax. hartrate at 65%/range.

Not the training makes us better but the recovery after right workouts.

Porkchop · Post by **Porkchop** » March 29th, 2006, 8:07 am

Citroen wrote:
Porkchop wrote:Your training program for rowing probably should be based on your observed MHR while erging rather than on a step test.
The step test being discussed here is done on an erg.
http://www.concept2.co.uk/guide/pdfs/tr ... ter_12.pdf

Okay, then I was confused about the terms. Thank you for the additional information. In the US, there is a commonly used heart rate test called a "step test" that involves stepping on and off a bench or stool for a period of time. That was what I had in mind when I wrote my post.

jamesg · Post by **jamesg** » March 29th, 2006, 8:32 am

Any thoughts on whether using heart rate as a training guide makes sense???

If hjs says yes, with a pb in the low 6' area, it's difficult to disagree. A certain amount of logic also backs up the idea.

It's said (against using HR) that HR varies with lots of factors as well as work generated, such as overtraining, slight illness, too much coffee, wrong time of day, body temperature, dehydration. But this surely is an argument FOR using HR: it means HR is a reference that can't be tampered with and that automatically takes account of our entire condition at the time. What else do we want from a control?

In any case any one work-level control doesn't exclude the others: we are free to watch both pace and HR. I find this makes it very easy to manage HR, just drop the pace a couple of seconds and/or have a drink if it's high, and pull a bit harder if it's low. Maybe that lets me go on for a bit longer at the right level, so in the end I've done more and maybe better training.

Somewhat tautological (how do we know what's the right level to start with), But there can't be much wrong if it makes me sweat for a 1/2 hour or so, and as a result I find I can walk a mile fast, or run to catch a train or climb a 100 steps with no particular problem. As happens most days.

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What's the best way to calculate my personal HR ranges?

What's the best way to calculate my personal HR ranges?

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