Need help from the health/workout gurus - heart rate monitor

[fiskebent]

I thought I'd throw in a graph from a 30 km time trial I did a while back. The upper curve is my heart rate. The lower curve is my speed. The black area is the anaerobic area. The red area is sugar burning territory. The blue is fat burning. The green is for restitution.

I pushed myself pretty hard there since it was a competition. So I was in the black area for quite a bit. Average heart rate was 176 BPM. Average speed was 30.7 km/h. Top speed 44.4 km/h.

[skunkworks]

fiskebent,

30.7 km/h? I'm confused, but isn't that impossible for more than short stretches?

[junglewarfare]

A heart rate monitor can help you interval train, whether you are swimming or biking or running. Interval training is when you work at 50-60% of your maximum capacity for 10 minutes, then work at 75% for a two minute stretch, then bring it down, then up again etc (I just made those numbers up, but that is basically how it works). This is a very effective way to build aerobic endurance. A heart rate monitor can help you quantify how hard you are working, instead of going by dead reckoning. Just guessing how hard you are working, especially late in a training session is hopelessly useless. After you have done 5 sets worth of sprints, you might think you are going pretty slow but in fact you are working your heart well.

[sandycove]

Milo is right on.

My program, at an advanced age, is indoor rowing and swimming. My rowing intensity is strictly monitored on a constant basis by (Polar) heart rate.

You'll determine your own target range depending on your age, the results you seek (weight loss vs training effect, for instance), the anticipated duration of your workout, and even the type of exercise you intend to do (heart rates for swimming are lower, for instance).

Your Polar manual will get you most of the way. And you'll find expert forums online for whatever type of exercise that interests you, with training programs taking heart rate into account, in astounding quantities. (You'd think indoor rowing would be fairly obscure; I swear half the people doing it must be physicists with minors in exercise physiology, to read the C2 forum.)

Don't know how old you are, but as time goes by, low impact, moderate heart rate, perfect form, long duration, every other day become the rule. Avoid injury. Most programs fail because we push too hard.