Heart Rate Help

the other method of calculating heart rate is......... to not.

If you spend all your time working out your max heart rate, and thinking about it and focusing on your heart rate instead of training, well, whats the point.

If you're working hard, or doing a light run, your body will tell you what its doing, can do, needs to do. You want to increase your speed, work harder than usual, if you want to increase distance, run further, etc, etc.

I just don't see the difficulty in using your body to work out what you need/can do.

What if you go to a lab, work out your heart rate max, mins etc but it was an off day and you didn't realise it. THen you're in the gym/out on the road working to a precalculated number, making no attempt to go harder because you're not paying attention, you've convinced yourself this number means something and can't be worked around. The opposite can be true, you got your theoretical number on the best ever day of running ever, you'll never match it again, you can't reach, for example 175bpm anymore so every single run you take you feel disheartened as you can't seemingly get better.
 
Last edited:
drunkenmaster said:
....
Click to expand...

and you run how far, how fast and how often?

IMO, the borg scale and whatever are all well and good in a lab for stationary effort when feeding back to a 3rd party i.e. on a treadmill or bike. But do you mean to tell that when your are out on the road that you're constantly saying to yourself this feels like a 14 so I'll keep it steady at that... even if your work rate falls off for the same perceived effort??
 
Last edited:
firstborn said:
and you run how far, how fast and how often?

IMO, the borg scale and whatever are all well and good in a lab for stationary effort when feeding back to a 3rd party i.e. on a treadmill or bike. But do you mean to tell that when your are out on the road that you're constantly saying to yourself this feels like a 14 so I'll keep it steady at that... even if your work rate falls off for the same perceived effort??
Click to expand...

looking at the normal Borg scale its hard to comprehend, but get a good coach who fills in the blanks and its a lot easier.

The Borg Scale of Perceived Effort

This is essentially ‘riding on feel’ but you must be honest with yourself. As a rule of thumb ‘15’ should be where you are at the top of Z3 (old Level 2)

6
7 VERY, VERY LIGHT (e.g. walking to the kitchen to make a cuppa)
8
9 VERY LIGHT (e.g. gentle stroll)
10
11 FAIRLY LIGHT (Brisk walk)
12
13 MODERATELY HARD (easy run or steady bike ride, you can hold a conversation without stopping for breath)
14
15 HARD – (You can speak in sentences but your breathing is fairly heavy and you are having to concentrate to maintain the effort)
16
17 VERY HARD – (I would equate this to about a 3rd of the way into a 25mile TT, it’s very hard, takes a lot of concentration only short phrases can be uttered but you are in control)
18
19 VERY, VERY HARD – (This should be where you are at in the last minute of a ramp test, brutally hard but you are just in control)
20 EXHAUSTION – (This is a living Hell you are trying so hard that you are on the point of evacuating your body at both ends! I’ve probably been there about 2 or maybe 3 times in my whole sporting career).


So for me there are a couple of hills on my ride to and from work that its easy to hit Borg 15 and you know it.
Its about trusting your self.

If you really want to go mental with training then your looking at a powertap/srm but that really can mess with your mind big time.

For me, the training i did was quality not quantity and it made such a huge difference.
Now im just just a gibbering mass of flab who needs to get fit but very very slowly.
 
I can see where you're coming from. I just want all the info I can get to judge how things are going so rely on my HRM/GPS to give me all that whilst training. But hey, that's me - i've been known to delay a run by a few hours if my garmin needed charging!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom