5 Steps For Better Heart Rate Monitor Training
Heart rate monitors have been used by all kind of endurance athletes for the last 20 years. Since there is a strong correlation between oxygen consumption and heart rate, knowing your current heart rate is a great indicator of your current oxygen uptake, thus how hard you work. When you’ve used your monitor a couple of times, you will start to notice that you ride with a low heart rate the pace can be maintained for hours. Riding with a heart rate close to your maximum heart rate can be maintained for a limited time only. This is a very short description of why it can be useful to know your heart rate during bike ride.
1. Know your resting heart rate
When you get stronger your resting heart will get lower. This is because your heart has an increased stroke volume which means it requires less beats to deliver the same amount of blood for your body. Thus, registering your resting heart rate every morning or once every week can be good way to identify progress in your fitness. I can promise you that this is one of the least exhausting ways to discover improvements. If you are a lazy rider that would like to notice progress but don’t like to do tough physical tests then register your resting heart rate in the morning. Please notice that there are some fluctuations from morning to morning, so don’t give a single measure to high impact on your evaluation. Like at all other times of the day, your heart rate will be affected by several factors like water balance, nutritional status, psychological stress etc.
2. Perform a threshold test
If you don’t already know your threshold heart rate, then I will strongly recommend that you perform a threshold test. This could very likely be a criterium or a time trial with a finishing time between 30-60 minutes. Your average heart rate in that race can be used to calculate intervals in the future. E.g. if you do a time trial with a finishing time of 48minutes and average 178 beats per minute, then you will get an idea of what kind of intervals needed to prepare you for the next time trial. Just remember that the adrenalin kick at competitions make it easier to maintain a high pulse.You can also calculate intervals or rides at a lower intensity based on your heart rate in the threshold test. How hard these intervals should be is very individual and is influenced by training status and experience.
3. Don’t use a heart rate monitor for pacing in anaerobic intervals
If you do short intervals with a length of less than 3minutes and don’t repeat them over and over again, then it is not a good idea to use your heart rate monitor for pacing. The reason is that your heart rate is delayed in the first 2-3 minutes of the intervals and thus will not reflect your current work. Anaerobic intervals should be done on feeling or optimally by pacing with a SRM crank, PowerTap or similar.
4. Analyze your heart rate data
Polar have a couple of heart rate monitors that offers you the opportunity to analyze data from your races or training rides. Analyzing a cycling race is funny and also very useful. E.g. time trialists can identify if they have made a too fast start and didn’t manage to keep the heart rate high all the way to the finish. As I mentioned above, it takes a couple of minutes before you are in the target zone, so trying to hit the target zone after just 2minutes is an easy way to die in a time trial.
5. Trial and error
One of the best ways to learn about heart rate monitors is simply to use them. Get out on the roads!
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Susan Dew said,
January 15, 2008 @ 6:07 pm
I am aware of all my target heart rates for various outcomes, (burning, strength, endurance, etc.) for my age of 47. The max for burning fat is 131 accoring to all info I have read. Most of my heartrates during an average 45 minute spin class is between 150-165 dependent on intervals, hills, racing, etc. IF this is the case, and all the literature indicates I’m “too anaerobic” the majority of the time, how do I spin to lose weight? I have always maintained or gained, never lost. Please advise. I’m at my wits end.
Scott said,
March 30, 2008 @ 8:43 am
My resting heart rate right now is about 72 beats per minute (sometimes 66 or 78 or 72 or 70). I just bought a ellipitcal machine and I want to work on lowering my cardio heart rate down as I want to train harder. I have missed a lot of gym time lately as I am 39 years old but I feel 21. I train time to time, no excuses, it is really my lack of effort, my gym is 3 blocks away and it a private 24hour power lifting gym. I bought the ellipital machine because I always sweat too much, this way I can run 20, 30 minutes or maybe an hour and shower when I’m done. Also I can combine sit ups during my cardio, 20 minutes of cardio, then do 50 to sit ups, then run 5 to 10 minutes cardio and then do another 50 situps and then I’m done.
I am about 170 in weight and losing but I have lots of tone (it’s easy for me to gain muscle, I joiced 10 years ago and never needed it, just wanted to see the size from steroids but never really completed the cycle, so I ended it early). I keep my heart rate no higher then 160 beats per minute when I run on the ellipitcal but I am out of shape or sort of but high energy. I train hard, I love to train but not lately, so I am doing the cardio 4 days a week and love it (things will get better in the next cuple of months as I continue to train on the ellipitcal machine). I feel great but my goal is to bring down my resting heart rate to 60 beat per minute even though 72 is fine. I don’t drink much (some beer but not much) or nor do I smoke and I don’t drink coffee (maybe once a week) but I drink tea with honey daily. I don’t eat any transfats nor do I eat anything with high fructose corn syrup or corn syrup in it, I learned that is just bad for ya and read all my labels when I shop.
Anyway, I appreciate this new post. This is a good topic.