Why Heart Rate Training?

Training With Five Heart Rate Zones

by Sally Edwards

You may think that training is just for athletes. I absolutely believe that with few exceptions everyone can train to create change which leads to a good healthy life. Exercise is as different for everyone as change is different.

Whether you want to change by shedding a few pounds or you just want to feel good about yourself, then here’s a way that, if you follow it, you may end up on the wellness road to a new life.

What I’m talking about is Heart Zone Training, the best approach to all-around fitness I’ve found. This isn’t a one-size-fits-all concept. It works for a 50-year-old athlete like me, a 60-year old with a family history of heart problems, a 70-year old wanting to improve strength, or an 80-year old who wants to climb to the third floor of a building without puffing. It works for a 20-year-old who wants to get fitter, a 30-year-old who has become more sedentary from too much time in front of a computer, and a 40-year-old who is preparing for a second wedding ceremony and wants to be their best.

Let’s take it one part at a time and first look at those three words: Heart Zone Training.

HEART
That’s easy. Your heart’s a muscle; you can strengthen it. It’s a use-it-or-lose-it muscle so if you don’t do cardiovascular exercise, you’ll lose the hearts functional ability.

ZONE
A zone is simply a range of heart beats. Recent research has shown powerful benefits from exercising in several different zones to get maximum benefit.

TRAINING
Training is the regime of exercising to achieve a goal. It’s different than exercising. When you exercise you are doing it for the joy and benefit of the exercise. When you train, you want to accomplish a goal.

Take my 58-year-old friend Sara whose young grandchildren are really paying attention to her workouts. Today, I see her reaping the benefits of paying attention to her body. She looks good, she feels good, and her annual physical give her straight “A”s for low blood pressure, low body fat and low cholesterol. She’s running her grand dads around now.

You can have similar results. It all starts with the beating of your heart.

RATING YOUR HEART RATE
Heart rates are measured in beats per minute (bpm). Our ambient heart rate is that measurement when you are sitting, relaxed, sedentary and it should be around 70 bpm for most people. In general, the lower your ambient rate, the better. World-class athletes have ambient heart rates in the 40’s and 50 bpm range.

Your resting heart rate is measured when you first wake up in the morning before you get out of bed. The lower the number the better. Common resting heart rate numbers are in the 50-60s but again, those really fit athletes commonly display resting heart rates in the 30’s and 40’s.

Your Maximum Heart Rate (Max HR) is the fastest your heart can beat for one minute. A generalized rule anchors your Max HR using a mathematical formula but it has a lot of error in it because it allows it to drop as you get older.

…exerpt from online article by Sally Edwards at How To Be Fit dot com.

Edwards holds a graduate degree in exercise physiology from Berkeley and a master’s degree in business. She has authored eleven books and is noted for her inspirational public speaking and support of charitable concerns , especially The Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. A Sacramento, California resident, she served in VietNam with the Red Cross.

The 5 Heart Rate Zones

There are five different training zones separated by 10% increments, each having different characteristics and benefits.

Healthy Heart Zone

The first zone is called the Healthy Heart Zone. This is 50-60% of your max HR. This is the easiest and most comfortable zone within which to train and is the one that is best for people who are just starting an exercise program or have low functional capacity. Those of you who are walkers most likely train at this zone. Although this zone has been criticized for not burning enough total calories, and for not being intense enough to get great cardiorespiratory benefits, it has been shown to help decrease body fat, blood pressure and cholesterol. It also decreases the risk of degenerative diseases and has a low risk of injury. In this zone, 10% of carbohydrates are “burned” (used as energy), 5% of protein is burned and a whopping 85% of fat is burned.

Fitness Zone

The next zone is the Fitness Zone, which is 60-70% of your max HR. Once again, 85% of your calories burned in this zone are fats, 5% are proteins and 10% are carbohydrates. Studies have shown that in this zone you can condition your fat mobilization (getting fat out of your cells) while conditioning your fat transportation (getting fat to muscles). Thus, in this zone, you are training your fat cells to increase the rate of fat release and training your muscles to burn fat. Therefore, the benefits of this zone are not only the same as the healthy heart zone training at 50-60% but you are now slightly increasing the total number of calories burned and provide a little more cardiorespiratory benefits. You burn more total calories at this zone simply because it is more intense.

Aerobic Zone

The third zone, the Aerobic Zone, requires that you train at 70-80% of your max HR. This is the preferred zone if you are training for an endurance event. In this zone, your functional capacity will greatly improve and you can expect to increase the number and size of blood vessels, increase vital capacity and respiratory rate and achieve increases in pulmonary ventilation, as well as increases in arterial venous oxygen. Moreover, stroke volume (amount of blood pumped per heart beat) will increase, and your resting heart rate will decrease. What does all this mean? It means that your cardiovascular and respiratory system will improve and you will increase the size and strength of your heart. In this zone, 50% of calories burned are from carbohydrates, 50% are from fat and less than 1% is from protein. And, because there is an increase in intensity, there is also an increase in the total number of calories burned.

Anaerobic Zone

The next training zone is called the Threshold or Anaerobic zone, which is 80-90% of your max HR. Benefits include an improved VO2 maximum (the highest amount of oxygen one can consume during exercise) and thus an improved cardiorespiratory system, and a higher lactate tolerance ability which means your endurance will improve and you’ll be able to fight fatigue better. Since the intensity is high, more calories will be burned than within the other three zones. Although more calories are burned in this zone, 85% of the calories burned are from carbohydrates, 15% from fat and less than 1% are from protein.

Red-line Zone

The last training zone is called the Redline Zone, which is 90-100% of your max HR. Remember, training at 100% is your maximum heart rate (maximum HR), your heart rate will not get any higher. This zone burns the highest total number of calories and the lowest percentage of fat calories. Ninety percent of the calories burned here are carbohydrates, only 10% are fats and again less than one percent is protein. This zone is so intense that very few people can actually stay in this zone for the minimum 20 minutes, or even five minutes (you should only train in this zone if you are in very good shape and have been cleared by a physician to do so). Usually, people use this zone for interval training. For example, one might do three minutes in the Aerobic Zone and then one minute in this Redline Zone and then back to the Aerobic Zone

…excerpt from online article by Chad Tackett (found at Arch Angel Health dot com/fitness.fa04)

Chad Tackett, the President of Global Health & Fitness (GHF), has degrees in Exercise and Heath Science and Nutrition, is a Certified Personal Trainer, and is a regular guest lecturer to both professional and lay audiences on the principles of effective exercise and good nutrition.