Why Track Heart Rate?
You don’t need to be a fitness industry professional to use technology and data to get the most out of your training. Whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned athlete, getting to know your personal fitness through your heart rate is a valuable tool to help you get to the next level. Knowing your metrics helps you push through and get to know your goals a lot better. When you fully understand where you are and where you’re going your fitness journey suddenly becomes a lot easier.
One of the best ways to learn about your fitness is through tracking your heart rate. While in the past heart rate training may have only been a tool for professional athletes, it’s getting more accessible with new technology. With inexpensive and popular fitness tracking solutions like the Apple Watch or Polar H10 anyone, regardless of their fitness level, can use heart rate training.
Still, heart rate training can seem difficult to understand. What do those numbers MEAN? How can you use them to unlock your fitness? Just keep reading to learn more about the value of heart rate training, and what this training can do for you.
What Do the Zones Mean?
The basic heart rate zones can be customized according to your preferences, but these are the industry standard zones and training modalities:
WARM UP - 30% to 59%
The WARM UP zone is the easiest workout zone in terms of intensity. It represents leisurely activities including walking and light yoga. This zone does not raise your heart rate significantly, and is unlikely to result in larger improvements to your cardiovascular fitness.
FITNESS - 60% to 69%
The FITNESS zone is the zone at which your body begins to see cardiovascular improvement form exercise. This zone is at a lower intensity, which means that in this heart rate range will provide a lower calorie burn and fewer health benefits. This intensity, however, is easy to keep up with for longer endurance activities like walking, and still provides health benefits.
ENDURANCE - 70% to 79%
The endurance zone represents an ideal balance between intensity and stamina. At this level your body is primarily fuelled by fat, rather than glycogen (carbohydrates) which gives you more endurance for longer workouts. This is a good zone to target when training for longer distances in activities like cycling and running.
HARDCORE - 80% to 89%
The HARDCORE zone represents the heart rate zone at which your body switches to primarily burning stored glycogen (carbohydrates) for energy. This means that you will be unable to keep this intensity for as long as lower heart rate zones, but the added intensity will lead to increased cardiovascular fitness.
RED LINE - 90% to 100%
The RED LINE zone corresponds to your maximum possible heart rates during your workout. At this intensity your body will be exclusively burning glucose for energy, which means that this intensity is not sustainable for very long. This heart rate zone is targeted primarily for short periods of time during high intensity workouts like HIIT workouts.
How Do I Get Started?
To get started with heart rate training download the FITIV Pulse app and record a workout. To see more about working out with FITIV please see:
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