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What are heart rate zones and how can you incorporate them into your exercise plan?
Jul
If you spend a lot of time exploring fitness content online, you may have come across the concept of heart rate zones. Heart rate zone training has become more popular in recent years, in part due to the boom in wearable technology, which, among other functions, allows people to easily track their heart rate.
Heart rate zones reflect different levels of intensity during aerobic exercise. They are most often based on a percentage of maximum heart rate, or the highest number of heartbeats per minute.
What are the different heart rate zones and how can you exploit them to optimize your training?
Read more: Thinking of using an activity tracker to support you reach your fitness goals? Here’s where it can support — and where it probably won’t
Three-zone model
Although several models are used to describe heart rate zones, the most commonly used model in the scientific literature is three-zone modelwhere zones can be divided into the following categories:
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zone 1: 55%–82% of your maximum heart rate
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zone 2: 82%–87% of your maximum heart rate
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zone 3: 87%–97% of maximum heart rate.
If you are not sure what your maximum heart rate is, you can calculate it using this equation: 208 – (0.7 × age in years). For example, I am 32 years senior. 208 – (0.7 x 32) = 185.6, so my predicted maximum heart rate is about 186 beats per minute.
There are also other models used to describe heart rate zones, such as five-zone model (as the name suggests, this one has five separate zones). These Models largely describe the same thing and can usually be used interchangeably.
What are the individual zones?
The three zones are based on the personality of the person lactate thresholdwhich describes the point at which exercise intensity changes from predominantly aerobic to predominantly anaerobic.
Aerobic exercise uses oxygen to support our muscles continue to work, ensuring we can continue for long periods of time without fatigue. Anaerobic exercise, however, uses stored energy to power exercise. Anaerobic exercise also builds up metabolic waste products (such as lactate) that escalate fatigue, meaning we can only produce energy anaerobically for brief periods of time.
On average, the lactate threshold remains at the level 85% of your maximum heart ratealthough this varies from person to person and may be higher in athletes.
Ketut Subiyanto/Pexels
In the three-zone model, each zone loosely describes one of three types of training.
Zone 1 means high-volume, low-intensity exercise, typically performed for a long time and at a leisurely pace, well below the lactate threshold. Examples include jogging or cycling at a gentle pace.
Zone 2 is threshold training, also known as tempo training, a method of moderate-intensity training performed for moderate periods of time, at or near your lactate threshold. This can include running, rowing, or cycling at a speed at which it is complex to speak in full sentences.
Zone 3 mainly describes high-intensity interval training methods that are performed for shorter periods and at intensities above the lactate threshold. For example, any circuit-style workout in which you work difficult for 30 seconds and then rest for 30 seconds would be zone 3.
Keeping the balance
To maximize your endurance performance, you need to find a balance between doing enough exercise to trigger positive changes while avoiding overtraining, injury, and burnout.
Zone 3 is considered to provide the greatest improvement maximum oxygen uptake – one of the best predictors of endurance and overall health – is also the most tiring. That means there’s only so much you can do before it becomes too much.
Training in different heart rate zones improves slightly different physiological propertiesand so by spending time in each zone, you ensure variety of benefits for performance and health.
Read more: Treadmill, exercise bike, rowing ergometer: which is the best choice for cardio at home?
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 (around 80%) in zone 1, with the rest split between zones 2 and 3.
Because endurance athletes train so much, they must spend most of their time in zone 1, otherwise they risk injury and burnout. For example, some runners accumulate over 250 kilometers a weekfrom which it would be impossible to escape if the entire operation was carried out in zone 2 or 3.
Of course, most people are not professional athletes. World Health ORganisation recommends that adults do 150–300 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise per week or 75–150 minutes of vigorous-intensity exercise per week.
If you think about it in terms of heart rate zones, you can consider zone 1 training as moderate intensity, and zones 2 and 3 as intense. You can then exploit the heart rate zones to make sure you are training within those guidelines.
Guduru Ajay Bhargav/Pexels
What should I do if I don’t have a heart rate monitor?
Just because you don’t have access to a heart rate monitor doesn’t mean you can’t exploit heart rate zones during your workout.
The three heart rate zones discussed in this article can also be prescribed based on your feelings using a plain test 10-point scalewhere 0 represents no effort and 10 represents the maximum amount of effort you can put in.
In this system, Zone 1 receives a rating of 4 or less out of 10, Zone 2 4.5 to 6.5 out of 10, and Zone 3 7 or more out of 10.
Heart rate zones aren’t a perfect measure of exercise intensity, but they can be a useful tool. And if you don’t want to worry about heart rate zones at all, that’s fine, too. The most critical thing is to just move.
