Determining Your Ideal Heart Rate Training Zone
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A question I often get asked is: “What should my heart rate be when on the circuit and during my cardio activity?” The answer to this question can dramatically improve your workouts and optimize total calories burned.
Knowing Your Heart Rate Training Zone
The formula to predict your maximum heart rate (220-age) is well known and published in fitness magazines and physiological textbooks worldwide. It is accepted as the formula to use to define maximum heart rate and to determine heart rate training zones. While many of you have probably not directly calculated your heart rate training zones, if you have ever taken an aerobic class or exercised and referred to a chart on the wall that required you to look up your age and the corresponding heart rate values, you have indirectly used this formula.
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How the Formula Predicts Heart Rate Training Zones
According to the formula 220-age, if you are 40 years old, your predicted maximum heart rate is 180 beats/minute (220-40 = 180). We can now take your predicted maximum heart rate and calculate training zones based on percentage values.
180 x 60% = 108
180 x 65% = 117
180 x 70% = 126
180 x 75% = 135
180 x 80% = 144
180 x 85% = 153
180 x 90% = 162
Research shows that the best health and fitness benefits occur when you maintain your heart rate within 65 to 85% of your age-predicted maximum heart rate. In using the 40 years of age example, this would mean that someone aged 40 should be exercising for at least 20 minutes at 117 to 153 beats/minute. A 10 second heart rate count can be determined by dividing the values by 6 (117/6 = 20; 153/6 = 26) which gives you a heart rate zone of 20 to 26 beats/10 second count.
How Can this Formula be Used by Everyone?
Interestingly enough, while many health and fitness parameters are influenced by someone’s gender or level of fitness, maximum heart rate is very closely related to age regardless of gender, fitness level or resting heart rate. Whether we are talking about a coach potato or endurance athlete, maximum heart rate will decline just the same for either person which is why the formula 220-age is universally accepted as the standard to calculate age-predicted maximum heart rate.
How Accurate is this Formula?
This formula can have a prediction error between 15 to 20%. Yes, this is quite high, but unfortunately until another formula is tested and accepted as a new standard of predicting maximum heart rate, the fitness industry will continue to use this formula.
There is an alternative way to calculate your maximum heart rate and that is to directly measure it. Many athletes and performance-related occupations such as paramedics, fire fighters and police officers often challenge their aerobic levels to the max by participating in a battery of tests which assess their oxygen capacity and measure their maximum heart rate response. These men and women are tested under medically supervised settings, so you could not replicate these tests at home or at your local fitness center. For this reason, we resort to using an indirect prediction such as 220-age, so that at least we have a benchmark value on which to start and base a training program.
How Do I Know if I Am in My Training Zone?
How do you know if you fall under the 15 to 20% prediction error? In other words, how do you know if you are working too hard or not working hard enough? You are struggling on the cardio machine, but can’t seem to get up to your training zone or you aren’t really pushing that hard, but have already exceeded your zone. Do you slow down or push harder? These are tough questions that need to be addressed if you are to optimize your exercise time. If you are healthy and are not taking any medications that could influence your heart rate response, use the following rules of thumb.
In general:
• To get the most out of your workout try and keep your heart rate between 65 to 85% of your age-predicted maximum heart rate. If you don’t know what it is, use the formula above to calculate your training zone.
• At the beginning of the workout, stay closer to the lower end of the range and slowly increase the intensity by increasing the tension or speed raising your heart rate to the higher end number.
• Use the “Talk Test” as an indication if you are working too hard or not hard enough. In other words, exercise at a level that makes it difficult to carry on a conversation, but not impossible. If you have to stop talking to catch up on breathing, you may be working too hard. However, every once in a while, you may want to push yourself to the upper limit for a challenge.
• To add to the last point, if you are working hard, but can’t seem to even break the lower end number, the formula may have overestimated your maximum heart rate, so train in a lower zone — possibly 55 to 75% instead of 65 to 85%. On the other hand, if you constantly surpass your predicted zone, but feel great and in control, the formula may have underestimated your maximum heart rate, which tends to happen to older adults. In this case, use a slightly higher heart rate range.
• Lastly, if you don’t like taking your heart rate, you may want to look into purchasing a heart rate monitor which will help you gauge how hard you’re working on a consistent level.
Take-Home Message
While estimating your maximum heart rate using the formula 220-age does involve prediction error, it helps provide a benchmark value for your workout programs. Keep in mind that the fitter you are, the lower your heart rate during exercise becomes and you have to work extra hard to raise it. With everything being equal, as long as you feel in control, comfortable and exhilarated by your workout, push yourself down the road less traveled. Enjoy your workout!
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