Training by maximum heart rate

zhengli said:

A few months ago, when I started to ride a bike I was not fit at all. My heart rate could easily go over 200 beats per minutes. Now I can ride longer and faster but my heart rate is never over 180 no matter how hard I try to push the bike.

Now that I am fitter, do I base my training on “maximum heart rate” of 180?

Thank you!

First off, cheers for getting onto a bike, getting in shape and so quickly seaking out informtion to improve on how you're training. To that end, hope this helps:
The fact that your maximum heart rate has decreased with training is a normal physiologic response to aerobic exercise. No need to go out and try to reach 200+bpm any more. Whether you should train by 180bpm or not is hard to say, it depends on how you reached that number. I can say that that is a larger decrease than I would expect.
Performing an incremental test to exhaustion (after several days of easy, recovery riding) is the best way to determine a maximal HR that is applicable to the formulation of training zones/intenisities. IOW, just hammering for a couple of minutes until you're about to puke and looking to see what your pulse is doesn't work out the same way (not saying you did this, just for contrast). Check out our page on this topic:
cyclecoach.comarticlesOpen ↗

Smartt/RST said:

First off, cheers for getting onto a bike, getting in shape and so quickly seaking out informtion to improve on how you're training. To that end, hope this helps:
The fact that your maximum heart rate has decreased with training is a normal physiologic response to aerobic exercise. No need to go out and try to reach 200+bpm any more. Whether you should train by 180bpm or not is hard to say, it depends on how you reached that number. I can say that that is a larger decrease than I would expect.
Performing an incremental test to exhaustion (after several days of easy, recovery riding) is the best way to determine a maximal HR that is applicable to the formulation of training zones/intenisities. IOW, just hammering for a couple of minutes until you're about to puke and looking to see what your pulse is doesn't work out the same way (not saying you did this, just for contrast). Check out our page on this topic:
cyclecoach.comarticlesOpen ↗

Hi Michael,

Thank you very much, that is very helpful.

In my opinion, max HR is not really important. I find Lacetat Threshold (or to be more precise 1 hour TT-Threshold) much more useful when finding out the different training zones.

Once in a while, I'd like to find out what my max HR is, but the most important would be training to increase power under LT. Good luck!

Most modern training plans no longer focus on max heart rate, but on your time trail heart rate (the highest average heart rate you can hold for period of time, usually about 8-10 minutes). This gives a much more reliable number to base percentages on than a max. Ive been using and coaching this method for a couple of years now and it has been a dramatic improvement over other methods. www.the-bike-shop.com/training

bikeshop said:

Most modern training plans no longer focus on max heart rate,

maybe you'd like to explain that to Peter Keen and British Cycling!

Quoted post said:

but on your time trail heart rate (the highest average heart rate you can hold for period of time, usually about 8-10 minutes).

only one person/company advocates this short test, and anyone else using TT HR uses something like a 1-hr TT HR

ric

zhengli said:

A few months ago, when I started to ride a bike I was not fit at all. My heart rate could easily go over 200 beats per minutes. Now I can ride longer and faster but my heart rate is never over 180 no matter how hard I try to push the bike.

Now that I am fitter, do I base my training on “maximum heart rate” of 180?

Thank you!

Zhengli,

Your max heart rate has declined because your stroke volume has increased. This is in turn due to the fact that your plasma volume has increased. A significant effect of intense training (or any training for that matter ) is a change in plasma volume. It can even effect your weight. It is an adaptive response (which requires some explanation on another occasion) with a rapid half time. If you stopped training for a couple of weeks your plasma volume would go down , stroke vol would go down and HR would increase :All charachteristics of a fresh rider.

Nature appears to have dealt with the problem of increased plasma vol by slowing the heart and increasing the amount it pumps at each beat. This is controlled by, among other things, the heart's nerve supply. If you keep up the training maybe your stroke vol will look like Inurain's. His bore a faint resemblance to that of a race horse!

It only makes sense (physiologically) to train at the max heart rate you can actually achieve, in your case 180 BPM. Be aware though that determining
max heart rate is exceedingly difficult and probably requires that something really nasty is chasing you.There are better training metrics. Talk to Ric,

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[quote="[email hidden]"]Zhengli,

Zhengli,
Correction. I meant use your max HR of 180 as a basis for training. Obviously you won't be doing a lot at max HR. Your 1 Hr sustainable power
is about 10-15 BPM below max HR and is a useful training metric. If you can obtain it min power require to elicit VO2 max is v.useful. There are training guidelines that require you to ride at fractions or multiples of this power and eliminate or sorts of problems associated with changing heart rates,

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