Since training more regularly, I’m finding that my LTHR is going up. What does that mean? More fitness? More effort on my part? Does it mean nothing? Thanks for your input.
It doesn’t mean anything unless you’ve had it tested and even then, HR is influenced by many environmental factors.
Surely if he knows that his LTHR has increased it means, by definition, that he has had it tested.
As for your other statement (and the snyde implication regarding usefulness of HR), so too does pace and power get influenced by environmental factors. Heat, wind and terrain will all affect pace at threshold. Heat and cooling will certainly affect sustainable power. Try doing an FTP test outdoors in perfect conditions and one in a closed, warm room with no ventilation or cooling and tell me there’s no difference.
In some ways HR takes better account of the affects of environmental factors than other measures. But it is a physiological metric, not a measure of performance. If you don’t take into account the environmental changes when using pace or power as a training metric then you are in danger of over or under training if you don’t either replicate the test conditions used to establish them or adjust your aims accordingly (basically through guess work.)
HR is not a perfect training/racing metric. Neither is pace nor power. And guess what…they all work to one extent or another and often at differing rates dependent on the individual.
To the OP, an increased LTHR in and of itself means very little. Combined with other data it can be helpful to guage improvement.
In layman’s terms it’s supposed to mean the HR you can maintain for 1 hour.
Since training more regularly, I’m finding that my LTHR is going up. What does that mean? More fitness? More effort on my part? Does it mean nothing? Thanks for your input.
Generally speaking and all things being equal, it probably means more “fitness”.
Well, I guess my point in asking is that I was under the impression that HR should go DOWN as you get more fit. I seem to be getting more fit as evidenced by FTP increases, increases in my power curve across the board, and per CTL. Trainingpeaks keeps sending me emails every so often about increasing my LTHR and updating my zones. These seem to be always increases, not decreases. So, does the increase mean I’m more fit because I can hold a higher HR for longer, or is it something that doesn’t matter too much so I shouldn’t worry about it. Is it pure environmental factors and effort and I shouldn’t change my zones very often? Thanks again.
if your ftp goes up you are more fit.
your heart rate could go up or down as you get more fit. it is a very complex thing which is why it is hard to use as an indicator of anything for anything.
if you are new to this stuff then your fitness may very well be increasing because you are learning how to push hard and tell your legs to shut up, so the HR goes up.
or any number of other things.
As Sharkait said, LTHR is basically considered to be your 1hr max HR. It’s not exactly right but the real definition is probably a little too technical for most. It involves stuff like the rate at which your body clears lactate vs the rate at which it creates it and the point where the two cross over. The proper testing is lab work stuff but there are field tests which can provide reasonable approximations.
In general terms you are correct. At the same work rate (e.g. pace or power) under the same conditions (terrain, temperature, wind, etc.) your average heart rate should go down as you get fitter. However as the aim is not to have the lowest heart rate but to have the fastest time, most HR based training will prescribe maintaining the average heart rate and increasing pace/power to achieve this. Effectively you are increasing the work done the same as you would with a pace/power based program that prescribes progressive overload. You are just doing it in a different way, using a different metric to dictate the rate of change.
LTHR is a separate variable. Particularly early in your athletic life it will increase as your body gets used to working at higher rates. Lots of technical stuff about lactate, mitochondria development, specific adaptation and other stuff generally enters the discussion about here. The point is that if you are using a program that sets HR targets based on your LTHR then you need to be sure that you are using your current LTHR, not one from months ago before it had developed properly. Again, the regular testing is far more important for those early in their athletic career when changes are more rapid and dramatic.
Ask yourself this question: What effect do you want your training to have on your power at LT? Obviously, you want a higher power, or higher oxygen uptake. That being the case, you are more fit and there’s no problem if HR is higher because the ratio of power/HR or VO2/HR has probably increased.
Well, I guess my point in asking is that I was under the impression that HR should go DOWN as you get more fit. I seem to be getting more fit as evidenced by FTP increases, increases in my power curve across the board, and per CTL. Trainingpeaks keeps sending me emails every so often about increasing my LTHR and updating my zones. These seem to be always increases, not decreases. So, does the increase mean I’m more fit because I can hold a higher HR for longer, or is it something that doesn’t matter too much so I shouldn’t worry about it. Is it pure environmental factors and effort and I shouldn’t change my zones very often? Thanks again.
I don’t assume anything and I don’t need a lesson on what affects HR. Just because an acronym is used tells me nothing about whether or not he/she had. I simply offered a general statement concerning HR and the environment without knowing anything else about the OP and his workout, it was not a snarky comment in the slightest.
I’m usually reluctant to wade into HR coneversations because they usually become a technical debate pretty quickly. However, my thoughts.
I don’t do LTHR testing but I do take HR into account on every training session and race. I was always fairly certain that generally my threshold (what I could hold for about an hour) was high 160’s. As I have intensified training even more over the last 6 months, I have found that I can hold even higher than that. My coach emphasizes racing by feel and I have been racing at significantly higher RPMs than I thought I could sustain. In my last HM I raced by feel and found afterward that I averaged mid-170s BPM for the race (a little over hour and a half). So either 1) I just mis-judged my threshold and / or 2) my threshold has increased. I’m guessing it’s a combination of the two. But regardless of which it is, it’s a huge learning for me that I can sustain those higher levels and don’t have to back off.
Well, I guess my point in asking is that I was under the impression that HR should go DOWN as you get more fit.
Perhaps you are mixing up your terminology:
Your resting heart rate will go down as you get fit.
Your threshold heart rate might go up as you can handle a higher average HR for an hour of work.
It sounds like your fitness is continually increasing based on your power data so if it has been awhile since you have last tested, you would want a re-test now to set your HR zones along with power zones to match your new fitness levels. If the increased HR is a trend you have been seeing over time, then it points to new HR training zones required to match your new level of fitness os that you aren’t under working if you are relying on HR alone. Perceived exertion, your HR, your power zones are all great tools to use to measure your fitness and progress.