Quoted message said:As an exercise physiologist with a PhD, I can tell you that you will be
wasting your time (and money) by doing lactate threshold determination
or VO2max testing to help you determine your heart rate training zone.
It is good enough to simply train at 65-90% of your estimated maximal
heart rate. If you are unfit, can reduce the bottom end of this range
to 55%. To estimate your maximal heart rate, subtract your age (in
years) from 220. And as you will find out, you should not try to train
day after day at 90% of your max heart rate.
I'm sure lots of people doubt the 220 calculation, but in principle it
works although there are numerous alternatives. 208-(AGE*0.7) gets
closer for me. THis was in a Paper by Doug Seal of the University of
Colorado.
Most age groupers(ie just looking to finish well and structure their
training) I know(ex large club chairman for 4-years) would never need
these tests. The simple one I've always told people to do is to buy a
HRM that fits their budgets and their needs, you can get good cheap
ones that do basic HRM from WalMart and similar or spend a lot, lot
more money and get lots more functions, zones, GPS etc.
Once you've got your HRM. Find a local decent hill, say something that
takes 1 to 1 1/2 Minutes to run up as hard as you can. Put a bucket or
small plastic tub at the top, walk to the bottom, start your HRM, run
to the top as fast as you can, around the bucket and jog back down;
repeat 3x. When you get to the top on the 4th time, see what you HR is,
thats likely to be your max or very, very close to it.
Whats the bucket for? Well if you ran hard enough you should be feeling
sick... its there just in case. The key thing is that no matter what
your current fitness level, your Max HR will be the same, so do the
test and find out how close your MHR is to 220-your age.
After that as musrun says, you can work out your zones and you are all
set!
