I got this e-mail today that I thought you might be interested in..since we row for fitness , many of us and rely on our heart rate.
Heart Rate Myth
Being in the Zone
Being in the zone isn’t just for athletes any longer. Whether it’s in your group exercise class or during personal training, you’ll find more recreational exercisers strapping on their heart rate monitors to stay in the “fat-burning zone” and get the most of their workout.
There’s just one fundamental problem as Fabio Comana, ACE’s Exercise Physiologist, sees it: Max HR calculations aren’t just imperfect, they can actually lead exercisers down the twilight zone.
Max HR = 220 – age
Consider this: The standard formula, which calls for subtracting your age from 220 to calculate a particular value for a training zone can deviate as much as 12 beats.
“For someone whose maximal heart rate is lower than what the actual maximal heart rate is, they may end up overtraining whereas if the maximal heart rate is higher than their actual heart rate, they may be undertraining,” says Comana. “Also, the 220 minus your age calculation tends to overestimate exercise heart rates in younger populations and underestimate exercise heart rate in older populations.”
Max HR = 208 – (age x 0.7)
A better mathematical formula is Dr. Hirofumi Tanaka’s 208 minus 0.7 times your age. At least with the Tanaka formula the standard deviation is less, or 7.4 beats vs. 12 beats for the Haskins and Fox formula. Hence, with a 20-year old client, using Max Heart rate calculation, the actual heart rate may be 212 or 188 vs. 207 or 194 using Tanaka’s formula.
Most clients exercise to achieve cardiovascular fitness combined with weight loss or maintenance. While this overall goal doesn’t seem to change much over the years, the means to get there seem to follow trends in fitness, Comana says.
Pat
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