I’ve calculated my MaxHR based on the formula of (220-Your Age).
If I actually never achieve the max HR per this formula, do I recalculate my training zones based on my actual max HR achieved in a workout? Or have I just not been pushing myself hard enough and is there some super-workout or test which can actually deliver my true max HR.
Does your MaxHR go up with increased fitness?
I’m not sure that max HR actually matters a great deal, or at all. Your Anarobic threshold would be a better number to find and base all your HR zones on.
The only test I can think of to absolutely determine your max HR would be to run as hard as you can up a 15% grade hill for as long as you can. Just before you collapse into a coma - measure your HR. That’s your max. Simple really.
Max HR is a function of age not fitness. It goes down as your age goes up.
Your max HR is useful in approximating training zones, which are percentages of your max HR. There are tests to determine your actual zones and thresholds (lactic acid, anerobic, etc) but they require special equipment.
The formula you provided is a generally correct - it provides the average max HR of someone your age. However, individual results vary tremendously. If you want to measure your max heart rate, strap on a HR monitor and hop on a stationary bike. Start at 100 watts. Maintain 85rmp, and increase wattage by 50 every 3 minutes. Write down your HR just before you increase wattage. Your HR should increase with each workload. However, at some point, your HR will level off even though resistance is increasing. This is your max HR.
"…Your HR should increase with each workload. However, at some point, your HR will level off even though resistance is increasing. This is your max HR. "
It’s doubtful that you could find your true max HR using this method. Lone Racer’s method is probably closer to finding your true max, but who would want to do that? Anyhow, max HR is not the best number to be basing training zones on because, as stated, it’s only a function of genetics and age, and not trainable. basing training zones off of lactate threshold HR is a far better method (see Friel’s Triathlete’s Training Bible). It’s far easier to test for LTHR and this method allows for adjusting training zones as fitness changes (hopefully improves).
So what’s max HR good for? Nothing, really. (other than knowing if you’re about to slip into a coma in that final sprint to the finish at your next race)
Go to the training archives and read my article “Know your heart” and “cycling heart rates”. You might get some answers for your questions…
Lone Racer is right. You are better off designing your HR training zones off of your anaerobic threshold. The anaerobic threshold can be defined as crossing over between aerobic and anaerobic zones. The AT is an extremely powerful and good predicator in performance. The anaerobic threshold value correlates specifically with the heart rate thus enabling the athlete to know precisely when their body will begin to experience oxgyen debt, become more anaerobic, and produce a higher volume of lactic acid resulting in muscle fatigue. Based off of the anaerobic threshold , formulation of more individualized heart rate training zones may be calculated, which in turn change as your fitness does. As far as 220-age, I wouldnt use that formula for anything. Below I cut and pasted an article that has appeared in the NY Times pertaining to 220-age for max HR. Also, here is a link to an intersting article discussing the 220-age history.
http://www.css.edu/users/tboone2/asep/May2002JEPonline.html
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Maximum Heart Rate Theory Is Challenged
by JSI
By GINA KOLATA
The New York Times
Donald Kirkendall, an exercise physiologist at the University of North Carolina, will never forget the time he put a heart-rate monitor on a member of the United States rowing team and asked the man to row as hard as he could for six minutes.
The standard formula for calculating how fast a human heart can beat calls for subtracting the persons age from 220. The rower was in his mid- 20s.
Just getting the heart to its actual maximum rate is an immense effort and holding it there for even a minute is so painful that it is all but inconceivable for anyone who is not supremely motivated, Dr. Kirkendall said. But this rower confounded the predictions.
“His pulse rate hit 200 at 90 seconds into the test,” Dr. Kirkendall said. “And he held it there for the rest of the test.” A local cardiologist was looking on in astonishment and told Dr. Kirkendall, “You know, there`s not a textbook in the world that says a person could have done that.”
But maybe, some physiologists and cardiologists are saying, the textbooks are wrong.
The question of how to find maximum heart rates is not just of academic interest, medical experts say. The formula for calculating the maximum rate has become a standard in cardiology and in fitness programs, and an entire industry has grown up around it, with monitors sold to individuals and built into exercise equipment.
“There is a need, a clinical and societal need, to estimate the maximum heart rate,” said Dr. Douglas Seals, an exercise physiologist at the University of Colorado.
Doctors use the formula when they test patients for heart disease, asking them to walk on treadmills while the speed and incline are gradually increased until their heart rates reach 85 percent of the predicted maximums.
The idea is to look for signs, like chest pain or a sudden drop in the heart rate, indicating that the heart is not getting enough blood. But if doctors underestimate how fast the person`s heart can beat, they may stop the test too soon, Dr. Seals noted.
Personal trainers and exercise instructors design fitness programs around the maximum heart rate, often telling people to wear heart rate monitors and then to exercise at 80 to 90 percent of the maximum in brief spurts to build aerobic capacity and at 65 percent to 75 percent to build endurance.
Some heart monitors built into exercise machines even shut the machines down if an exerciser exceeds 90 percent of the predicted maximum. But if the heart rate formula is wrong, these exercise prescriptions are misguided.
“If youre trying to improve their aerobic fitness or to train for certain endurance events, then you want to know with a reasonable accuracy what intensity youre exercising at,” Dr. Seals said. “If your estimate is 10 or 20 beats too low, then you`re pretty far off.”
Exercise physiologists say, however, that being pretty far off is more common than most people expect.
“The more information we have, the more we realize that that formula is just a very rough consideration,” said Dr. Jack H. Wilmore, an exercise physiologist at Texas A&M.
And while Dr. Seals is now proposing a new formula to use as a general guide, he and others say it is simplistic to rely on a single formula to predict the maximum heart rates of individuals.
The common formula was devised in 1970 by Dr. William Haskell, then a young physician in the federal Public Health Service and his mentor, Dr. Samuel Fox, who led the service`s program on heart disease. They were trying to determine how strenuously heart disease patients could exercise.
In preparation for a medical meeting , Dr. Haskell culled data from about 10 published studies in which people of different ages had been tested to find their maximum heart rates.
The subjects were never meant to be a representative sample of the population, said Dr. Haskell, who is now a professor of medicine at Stanford. Most were under 55 and some were smokers or had heart disease.
On an airplane traveling to the meeting, Dr. Haskell pulled out his data and showed them to Dr. Fox. “We drew a line through the points and I said, Gee, if you extrapolate that out it looks like at age 20, the heart rate maximum is 200 and at age 40 its 180 and at age 60 it`s 160,” Dr. Haskell said.
At that point, Dr. Fox suggested a formula: maximum heart rate equals 220 minus age.
But, exercise physiologists said, these data, like virtually all exercise data, had limitations. They relied on volunteers who most likely were not representative of the general population. “It`s whoever came in the door,” Dr. Kirkendall said.
In addition, he and others said, gauging maximum heart rates for people who are not used to exercising is often difficult because many prematurely stop the test.
As the treadmill hills get steeper, people who are not used to exercise will notice that their calves are aching. “They will say they can`t go any further,” Dr. Kirkendall said.
In addition, Dr. Wilmore, the exercise physiologist, said it was clear from the scattered data points that maximum heart rates could vary widely from the formula. “If it says 150, it could be 180 and it could be 120,” Dr. Wilmore said.
But the formula quickly entered the medical literature. Even though it was almost always presented as an average maximum rate, the absolute numbers took on an air of received wisdom in part, medical scientists said, because the time was right.
Doctors urging heart patients to exercise wanted a way to gauge exercise intensity. At the same time, exercise gurus, promoting aerobic exercise to the public, were asking how hard people should push themselves to improve their cardiovascular fitness. Suddenly, there was a desire for a simple formula to estimate maximum heart rates.
“You tell people to exercise at a moderate intensity,” Dr. Haskell said. “Well, what`s a moderate intensity?”
Soon, there was a worldwide heart-rate monitor industry, led by Polar Electro Inc, of Oulu, Finland, selling more than 750,000 monitors a year in the United States and citing the “220 minus your age” formula as a guide for training.
The formula became increasingly entrenched, used to make graphs that are posted on the walls of health clubs and in cardiology treadmill rooms, prescribed in information for heart patients and inscribed in textbooks. But some experts never believed it.
Dr. Fritz Hagerman, an exercise physiologist at Ohio University, said he had learned from more than three decades of studying world class rowers that the whole idea of a formula to predict an individual`s maximum heart rate was ludicrous. Even sillier, he said, is the common notion that the heart rate is an indication of fitness.
Some people get blood to their muscles by pushing out large amounts every time their hearts contract, he said. Others accomplish the same thing by contracting their hearts at fast rates. As a result, Dr. Hagerman said, he has seen Olympic rowers in their 20`s with maximum heart rates of 220. And he has seen others on the same team and with the same ability, but who get blood to their tissues by pumping hard, with maximum rates of just 160.
“The heart rate is probably the least important variable in comparing athletes,” Dr. Hagerman said.
Heart rate is an indicator of heart disease, said Dr. Michael Lauer, a cardiologist and the director of clinical research in cardiology at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation. But, he added, it is not the maximum that matters: it is how quickly the heart rate falls when exercise is stopped.
An average healthy person`s heart rate drops about 20 beats in a minute and the rates of athletes “nose dive by 50 beats in a minute,” Dr. Lauer said.
In three recent studies, Dr. Lauer and his colleagues found that people whose rates fell less than 12 beats within a minute after they stopped exercising vigorously had a fourfold increased risk of dying in the next six years compared with those whose heart rates dropped by 13 or more beats.
Dr. Lauer pays no attention to the standard formula when he gives treadmill tests. More than 40 percent of patients, he said, can get their heart rates to more than 100 percent of their predicted maximum. “That tells you that that wasn`t their maximum heart rate,” Dr. Lauer said.
The danger, he said, is that when doctors use that formula to decide when to end a treadmill test, they can inadvertently mislead themselves and their patients. Some patients may be stopping too soon and others may seem to have a heart problem because they never can get to what is supposed to be their maximum rate.
“Some people are being pushed and others are not,” Dr. Lauer said. “In my view, that is unacceptable.”
Yet, Dr. Seals said, many doctors want some sort of guide for estimating maximum heart rates for treadmill tests. And many people who want to increase their fitness crave a general formula.
So Dr. Seals and his colleagues decided to take another stab at finding an equation.
In a study published in the March issue of The Journal of the American College of Cardiology, Dr. Seals and his colleagues devised a new formula: maximum heart rate equals 208 minus 0.7 times age. They used published studies involving 18,712 healthy people and data from 514 healthy people they recruited. Their formula gives much higher average maximum heart rates for older people, with the new and old heart rate curves starting to diverge at age 40.
But raising doubts about the heart rate formula is unlikely to lead people to abandon it, exercise physiologists say. What would they do without it?
“Ive kind of laughed about it over the years," Dr. Haskell said. The formula, he said, "was never supposed to be an absolute guide to rule peoples training.” But, he said, “It`s so typical of Americans to take an idea and extend it beyond what it was originally intended for.”
I really don’t know why people are still racking their brains trying to figure out what their zones are. It’s very apparent that guestimated formulas don’t work. For all the time that is spend figuring these out and time spent training in the wrong zones…why not spend a little money and have your full physiological profile done with lactic acid testing. As I’ve stated before, the guys up in Canada will send you a testing kit that you can do at home, with your coach, at the gym; wherever.
I’m spending approximately $300.00 per year on tests (6 tests in one year) and find this to be the best money I’ve ever spent. This keeps me in my individual zones at all times…no more wasted hours of training.
I hope this helps
Paul
Can you post some info about the tests you are using or send us a link?
jaretj
Hi Jaret,
I use the guys at the Peak Centre for Human Performance in Canada. www.peakcentre.ca
Hope it helps
Paul
This is an interesting thread. As I posted in another thread, I have a rudmentary understanding of heart rate as viewed in the fitness context.
Here is what I don’t understand: I am 42 and have had a lot of illnesses and injuries, many more than an average 42 male. About the same as three dead 65 year old males. When I do the “220-your age” thing I get 178 as a “max”. That is a joke. That is moderate cruise for me. When I am at an 85% perceived effort or about a “17” on the Borg Scale of Perceived Exertion (“Very Hard”) my heart rate is above 180 consistently.
So, the things for calculating max heart rate don’t work for me.
IMO, most people use HR as a traning barometer b/c its easy and inexpensive to measure.
With lactate training (from what i remember from TB & articles) is that you’d need to do a blood test immediately after training to find the LT at that moment. Also,to find your initial threshold don’t you need expensive equipment? The you graph two different series of data and where the plots cross or intersect (or are parallel) is your LT?
I don’t remember the procedure exactly and I don’t have the book/articles with me. It seemed to be described as the “best way to measure your daily training, if you have the means”. I remember being under the impression that most people didn’t have the means, so it was not practical.
HR training is not only practical, but very simple. So, it’s the most prescribed method.
Finding your max heart rate ain’t complicated, but it is very hard. You can follow the gradual method of increasing speed and incline on a treadmill every 3 minutes (or whatever the recommended way is), or you can just warm up for 10 minutes or so, and then “run your balls off for 3-5 minutes” and look at the number on your HRM. You just measure your HR at a short period of maximal effort.
For most people (i.e. the average) HR calculations will give you a usable number find finding training zones. Think of a bell-shaped curve … only the extreme ends of the curve will need to find their own max. They will be the ones thathave a significant difference between their calculated and actual Max HR. HOw do you know if you’re average? You don’t. Do your own test.
When did HR training become a waste of time?
Tom:
Your statements are validating the case in point that many of the responders in this thread are making - that the math formula is a wildly inaccurate method for many people (myself included) and a near miss for most others.
I am 47, which would set my max HR at 173bpm. I have done the run-to-near-coma test and seen my HR at 177. Actually, I think I could have squeezed out 178 or even 179 - but that would be guessing. These 4 or 5 bpm could represent a 1/2 or even a full training zone. I could easily be training in the wrong zone and waisting many months of hard work.
It reinforces the idea that if you are going to invest so much time in training/race fees/bike gear etc., that you should invest a small amount of money into setting accurate training zones via anaerobic testing or as jkatsoudas first said, lactate threshold tesing(probably better), and optimize your overall training investments. Optimized = better performance = more fun.
I will be making my appointment for a lactate test in the new year, after Base I is done.
I again agree with Lone Racer and with Tom. Using myself as an example, my age (27) using the 220-age formula would give me a max HR of 193. I, in fact have a max HR of 208 (determined through a true Vo2 max test) and my AT HR is acually 196bpm(again clinically tested during a vo2 test using the Vslope method) So I am just another case that the 220-age formula is a joke. If I was to follow the 220-age formula, it would say that my max HR was in fact LOWER than my actual race pace for olympic distance! I would suggest to anyone who can, go get tested. Either it be LT tests via blood, AT tests via oxygen based testing (vo2 max), or whatever, you can get a better handle on your training and maximize your time spent training and your performance as well.
For those that get LT and AT testing, how do you use that info to set up your daily training? Same fashion as knowing your HR max?
HOw do you monitor your LT and AT levels during the actual training to ensure you’re not above or below where you are suppossed to be?
I understand there are different ways of monitoring and different scales, I’m asking what method you use on a daily basis (if any).
For those that get LT and AT testing, how do you use that info to set up your daily training? Same fashion as knowing your HR max? Yes - since the purpose of any of these testing methods is to determine your training zones, you simply make the determinations and use them to do each workout - no matter how you arrived at the zone classes.
HOw do you monitor your LT and AT levels during the actual training to ensure you’re not above or below where you are suppossed to be? On a daily basis you do not monitor your LT & AT - those were determined at test time and will only change over a period of time. It is recommended that you re-test LT or AT 3-4 times thru-out the training year(if you are pushing your LT or AT zones up from all your training, then you will have to be restested so that remain in zone). So on a daily basis u use your HRM just the way you would if you used the 220-age method to set your zones.
**I understand there are different ways of monitoring and different scales, I’m asking what method you use on a daily basis (if any). **I use Heart Rate Monitor method as stated above.
LT & AT methods are merely more accurate methods of dertermining your zones as compared to 220-age calculation. They all result in determining the same thing - training zones. From there, u use your HRM to monitor your workouts.
HTH.
When I start working with a client, then again several times during the year (usually evry three months or so) I give them a vo2 max test using a metabolic cart. During the test, I am digitially monitoring their heart rate while collecting their expired gases. The machine detects their anaerobic threshold during the test. The anaerobic threshold value correlates specifically with the heart rate thus enabling the athlete to know precisely when their body will go into oxgyen debt, become more anaerobic, and produce a higher volume of lactic acid resulting in muscle fatigue. So based off of their anaerobic threshold , I create their target HR zones. To create Heart rate training zones you will need to find two heart rates: A heart rate when Anaerobic Threshold (AT) occurs. This can be done using a metabolic analyzer. A heart rate when Respiratory Compensation (RC) occurs or Max Vo2 (and peak HR). Again, this can be done using a metabolic analyzer. The %s are of HR @ AT. So if during the Vo2 max test, the analyzer detects your AT Vo2 at 46.6 ml/o2/kg/min and your AT HR is 165bpm, and your max is 51.7 ml/o2/kg/min with a max HR of 191bpm, you plug those HR #s into the below: **Zone 1: **75%-84% of AT Zone 2: 85%-95% of AT Zone 3: AT – 110% of **AT Exception: if 110% is over Max- then use 105% Zone 4: **111% of AT – Max I use these zones to train my athletes. Every three months we retest and see if we need to make any adjustments in their zones as their fitness level changes. Hope that helps.
Why do you want to know your max HR? Are you using a specific training plan or guide that uses it? What zones do you want to train in? How to you calculate your zones? I’m just wondering because your question implies that you may not have a lot of experience training this way and while I agree with many of the posts - what good is knowing your max, LT, AT…if you don’t know how to use it?
I’ve used Serious training for serious athletes and the formula: resting HR + x% (max HR-resting HR) for zones, I’ve used Gordo’s Aet (tons of info at Gordo’s site), and Friel’s zone with LT based on 30 min time trial. Lots of people think perceived exertion is just as good or better…and many elite athletes (exp. runners) train based solely on RPE…
So whats your training plan? How are you going to use your zones? Any thought on getting a coach? What are your training/racing goals? We need to know the above to give better advice…
David
I also have issues w/ the formulas that predict the max HR from age. So a few years ago I decided to do successive 25 mile TT over a few weeks increasing my HR each time and see where i am most comfortable and do not feel like I will bonk whenever a small hill gets in the way. What I found was:
while warming up helps, my HR and breathing is not stable until 5 or 6 minutes into the ride.
I like riding at a medium hard pace and can keep going almost indefinately >40miles at 175bpm with an average of >250W. For most races then I settled at racing around 172-4 so I would have a little reserve for small hills, and as a safety margin since at higher HR I sometimes get lightheaded. …or is it that I am breathing wrong at higher HR, ie the HR is ok, but bad breathing makes me bonk or get dizzy. Anyway, I assumed that my maxHR was around 200.
HR peaks AFTER the peak of the hill EVERY TIME… HR rise begins immediately after I stop working so hard >350W at the crest of the hill. Even if the hill takes 5+ minutes.
Several times I have seen 20bpm higher HR that I thought I could maintain, but was actually a little afraid to go on at that “new” HR since I did not know what would happen. The highest HR I had seen a few years ago was 195 during a long hillclimb, and I was not hurting. These times I was climbing on the bike in a standing position. DO the different muscles used “allow” a higher HR?
Have been a bit out of shape for 3 years now and thought that the AGE THING might have caught up w/ me by now… but I just found a new spike in my max recorded HR at 211 (on the CT) after 1 1/2 months of training. So what is my TRUE maxHR? Or more to the point, what are my training zones?
My portable HR monitor/cycling computer is a Vetta 25. I am using a CT 3D w/HR as my trainer. Are the two HR monitors going to give the same information?
My sustainable power is a little greater than 250W while on my road bike, closer to 265W on the TT bike, >350W on long climbs. Shorter efforts give >400W w/ peaks of >600W when testing for about 5 minutes. What is a good test to do now?
8)I am nearly 52. Comments?
I have doubts whether a newbie should conduct a stress test initially to determine a Max HR, especially when considering much of the training will be zone 2, and a few beats in either direction are going to mean a whole lot (at this point).
But, here’s a stress test I saw the other day (linked from another board) that seems to be simple. Remember simple means uncomplicated, not “easy”.
I plan on doing this the 1st week of january.
STRESS TEST PROTOCOLS: Various Sports Testing Labs, and Cardiac Centers, use varying protocols. However, they all have certain areas of commonality. They allow for a period of warm up, and they gradually take you, step by step, through higher levels of intensity, pausing at each level to allow your heart rate to stabilize.
These tests are only conducted after receiving medical permission, and there are always trained rescue personnel on hand.
EQUIPMENT: A chest strap-type HRM, and a professional-type treadmill with electronic control of elevation to 12% or higher. Ten percent will do in a pinch.
THE TEST: Step on the treadmill, running at 2 mph (miles per hour), and set to an angle of 2%. Walk at this easy pace for three minutes. Unless you have problems with balance, do not grasp the rails during any part of the test.
At the end of the first three minutes, increase the speed to 3 mph, and the angle to 4%.
At the end of the next three minutes, increase the speed to 4 mph and the angle to 6%
After three more minutes, increase the speed to 5 mph, and the angle to 8%.
At the end of the next three minutes, hold at 5 mph, but increase the angle to 10%. (If the person being tested is a trained endurance runner, the speed may be increased to 6 mph and higher.)
At the end of the next three minutes, do not change the speed, but increase the angle to 12%.
You may touch the rails lightly, to regain and maintain balance, but do not hold onto them.
If the treadmill will go beyond 12%, continue to increase the angle of incline every three minutes until the runner becomes too tired to continue, elects to stop, or the heart rate refuses to go any higher. Record this final maximum heart rate.
If the treadmill will not go higher than 10% or 12%, you may instead increase the speed every three minutes (only for trained runners who are used to the higher speeds, and who are able to maintain balance at the higher speeds without holding on to the rails).
After reaching and recording MHR, reduce the angle of the treadmill to 2%, the speed to a comfortable walk, and allow the runner to continue until breathing is normal. Terminate the test.
Some clarification - I am 27, so using the formula 220-age I have a theoretical max of 193.
In training the highest I’ve ever seen is 178, or 92% of that number. Did a Conconi test (HR monitor and treadmill) and got a highest HR of 185 and AT pulse of 160. Been using this for broadly classifed “sub-AT” and short jumps into “X beats above-AT” intervals.
Guess I got psyched from reading other posts (such as in this thread) where people routinely have training HR much higher than what the 220-age formula would yield. But what I did learn is that “everyone is different” - so ignore all that and keep training…
I did want to create zone HR definitions based on max HR, but I guess I can use the AT HR I got from my Conconi test and the multipliers mentioned by Jason Goldberg.