tabatas' and heart rate

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madrower68
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Joined: February 20th, 2009, 6:52 am

tabatas' and heart rate

Post by madrower68 » March 21st, 2009, 10:39 pm

All references to tabatas that I can find refer to breathing capacity/VO2. Since this isn't an easy thing to determine on your own can anyone tell me what percentage of max heart rate someone should go to while doing tabata's. How are the two related? I am male, 40 years old and have a resting heart rate of 60 bpm so figure that my 100% limit is roughly 180 bpm. Should a guy go all the way to 170 bpm or so? Thanks in advance for any input.

Cyclist2
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Post by Cyclist2 » March 22nd, 2009, 12:50 pm

Heart rate in tabata intervals (20 seconds max intensity, 10 seconds rest, repeated 8 times) is not an effective measure because "max intensity" means just that - you go as hard as you can regardless of HR. I find that my HR never gets to my max (around 180 also) because it is a lagging measure and I'm done before it ever gets there. It does, however creep up and doesn't come back down as far during the next short rest period.

I use the erg monitor to guage my effort, trying to keep the pace at my max 2K pace minus about 5 seconds. I usually find I can keep all of them there, or close, and still be able to finish. If I go faster in the first few, I die on the last few and can't finish in anything more than a gasping paddle.

Lots of past posts on tabatas, search around. Good luck and have fun (?)!
Mark Underwood. Rower first, cyclist too.

M. Podolsky
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Post by M. Podolsky » March 23rd, 2009, 12:15 am

I did Tabatas for a while, and I was able to get the HR up very close to max, but it depended a lot on the warmup. For example, if I'd done a reasonably hard 30 minute row before the Tabatas, then by the 8th rep I'd be within a couple of beats of max. However, with a short-ish warmup (say 5km) the highest HR would be 6 or 7 beats below max by the 8th rep.

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