What Heart Rate Tells You About Your Workout: Is Your Heart Going To Explode?

Let’s talk about our hearts today. Hopefully it’s beating happy and healthy and you’re feeling alive.

While that’s all important, it’s not what I want to chat about.

I recently received this email from one of my closest friends…

I Picture My Heart Exploding At Some Point

Well, okay.

So that’s where we are today because I feel like a ton of people use heart rate monitors but don’t really know what it means aside that it says your heart is beating.

What Is Maximum Heart Rate?

And no, it’s not how fast your heart beats when you kiss your guy!

First things first…

Your maximum heart rate is the highest your heart can beat safely… it’s the “threshold” of where you can take yourself if you were to go full out 100% with your workout.

Everyone’s max heart rate is different depending on age, fitness level, overall health and a slew of other variables. But for the most part, it’s pretty easy to get a rough estimate.

So for me (I’m 30)… my MHR would be 190 beats.

Once you know your Max Heart Rate, you’re able to use the heart rate monitor to hit certain training perameters to accomplish desired training results.

The HR Monitor Is The Best Fitness Tracker!

Heart rate monitors were the first high tech fitness trackers, no? Okay, maybe after pedometers.

But out of all trackers, I think they’re the most useful in terms of the information they can give about you, your fitness levels, and your workouts.

Sure knowing how many steps you take in a day is useful, it helps motivate you to move more. But for those of you that already love exercise, and really don’t need help moving more throughout the day, they are a waste of money (sorry, it’s true).

But in terms of…

After all, if you ask people when they are working out to identify the intensity of their workout, they will likely be wrong.

Having a heart rate monitor can make it easy for you so you know when you’re exercising and when you’re wasting your time.

That is, if you know how to use it (beyond putting on that comfortable strap and plugging your information into the system).

Heart Rate Zones

Now that you know your MHR (Max Heart Rate), you can use that to determine all the other fitness zones.

You’ve heard words like “fat burning zone” and “anaerobic zone” but what does that mean?

Let’s break it down…

Why? Because I freaking love science and talking stuff like this!

• 60-70% of your MHR
• This zone improves your hearts ability to pump blood and enhances your muscle’s power to use/take in oxygen.
• The increased oxygen to muscles, allow them to recover, making this a great zone for recovery runs, long runs or easy workouts.
• The body learns to metabolize fat as a fuel.

Going back to using myself as the case study, my heart rate would be between 114 – 133 beats/minute.

Don’t worry, in just a second we’ll go over why and when we should train here. But I think it is important to stress that while the percentage of fat burned is high, this doesn’t mean if you are trying to burn fat where you should stay.

The harder you exert yourself, the more calories you burn.

Some may come from carbohydrates being broken down, some from fat… but regardless the best way to lose weight is to burn more calories than you take in. Create a deficit!

My point…

Don’t let the “fat burning zone’ tempt you to do all your training here. You get much more bang for your time buck in other zones. Got me?

• 70-80% of your MHR
• This zone is the most helpful for improving your overall cardio health and fitness. If you want to be able to run farther, longer than this is the place you’ll want to spend a lot of time.
• Your body is able to increase it’s cardio-respiratory capacity, that’s just fancy jargon for saying your body’s ability to transport oxygen to the muscles and take away carbon dioxide.
• Helps to condition the muscles as well.

For zone 2, my heart rate would be between 134 – 152. <— Just to give some perspective.

This is the zone where you will likely find yourself in most often when doing cardio workouts, or workouts at FitWomensWeekly.

Or at least, it should be.

The anaerobic state is the zone that Jeanette is finding herself in during her runs.

• 80-90% of your MHR
• During this zone the body cannot remove lactic acid (byproduct of the muscles) as quickly as it’s produced. Have you ever experienced itchy legs during a run?That’s lactic acid… I used to get it ALL the time and that was my sign that I should slow down a bit.
• Training here is actually important as it helps to increase your lactic threshold… if you can hold it here for a long time, that’s impressive as you’ll feel tired, and find yourself breathing hard.
• But this will help to improve your overall physical performance… if you’re aiming to improve.

For the anaerobic zone, my heart rate would be between 153 – 171. <— Getting close to my Max!

This zone should only be reached by those of you that are fit… really fit. It’s intense, it’s hard to recover from and it will leave you feeling as if your chest is literally going to explode.

• 90-100% of your MHR
• Should only be hit for very short spurts.
• Amazing at increasing your fast twitch muscle fibers and developing speed.

I personally train in this zone every week… so it’s not something to be afraid of. But more on that in just a second, hang on tight!

For me, my heart rate jumps between 171-190 beats in this zone. And it’s killer! Killer awesome.

Why Train In Different Zones?

Training between all of the zones is really important for your overall physical fitness, mind and body composition.

If you’re looking to burn body fat, then keeping all of your workouts within the first 2 zones is possible but for your overall health, it’s important to bring your heart rate up and down.

Plus, playing around with intervals (going way up in heart rate and rest to bring it down before going up again) can burn a tremendous amount of body fat fast! It’s the training system I use when I want to lean out quickly.

The demand is puts on your body is huge!

But let’s get a bit more specific.

Slow and steady workouts are important to help the body recover. The increased oxygen actually helps muscles to recover from previous workouts. Enjoy a light cardio session after intense, hard workouts.

They don’t have to be long, just 20-30 minutes.

This is also the zone for long runs, which because of their length should only be done 1-2 times per week. These long runs help to build strength, endurance and helps to burn some serious calories!

Basically, it’s prolonged recovery run in terms of speed.

Just remember, just because it has the “fat burning” label, doesn’t mean that you’re going to burn the most amount of fat. Think about how many calories you burn jogging 2 miles… you’re talking maybe between 170-200 depending on how great of shape you’re in.

But if you full out run as fast as you can for 2 miles (stopping to rest when needed) you can burn up to 20 calories a minute!

Thats a total caloric burn of 250+.  Speed work… does a body good!

Working out here will help to improve your body’s ability to use up available oxygen to use carbs and fat to fuel.

For training purposes, you should aim to train here 2-3 times per week. That could be with cardio sprints, workouts with FitWomensWeekly or great strength training sessions.

Just make sure to give yourself time to recover (most people need 48 hours).

Oh sprinting, how I love you!

For those of you that have been exercising regularly and consider yourself in shape… are you adding sprints into your workouts?

You should!

Training here will help to increase speed, power, and muscle.

Just look at a sprinter to see the awesome benefits for the body.

But this zone is hard, and shouldn’t be done more than 1-2 times in a week.

If we were to talk about my training, then I would tell you that every Tuesday morning you can find me at a local track knocking out sprints.

They are hard, they burn, but they will make you an overall better athlete and helps tremendously with body composition!

What Does It Mean When You’re Heart Is Racing More Than It Should?

So let’s go back to Jeanette’s email…

Using the information above, it’s now a no brainer.

I know and she knows that she can run 4 miles in an anaerobic state (because she’s in great shape) but that doesn’t mean she should if she wants to improve.

Just because you can, doesn’t mean you need to go balls to the wall with every run (sorry I hate that expression but it works too well).

Will she feel slow?

Probably, but by practicing following her heart rate instead of the speed at which her feet can carry her, she will improve. And my guess is, improve quickly.

She will notice that her pace will be able to creep up yet she will be able to maintain that lower heart rate.

And that’s the power of using the monitor.

Having actual data right there to help guide your training efforts.

I hope so, but I understand that science and math can be confusing, especially when you put them together!

So if you have any questions, do not hesitate to ask below, and I’ll be more than happy to go even deeper.

There Are People Who Know More Than Me – Shocking I Know

While I know about heart rate training, and I think it’s an awesome way to help monitor improvements and assist with training, I don’t personally use it.

I should and I have every intention of picking up a strap to use with my Garmin.

But since I don’t have one, you should seek more information and help from people who do.

I happen to have several friends who I classify as “HR Pros” that can offer a ton of advice:

Amanda @ Run To The Finish

Low Heart Rate Training

Maffetone Heart Rate Training

Amanda @ MissZippy

The Best Training You’re Not Doing

Summer Of MAF

Browse their training posts for some great tips!

So of course now I have to ask…