Tips for Better Heart Rate Monitor Training

Heart rate monitors have been used by all kind of endurance athletes for the last 20 years. Since there is a strong correlation between oxygen consumption and heart rate, knowing your current heart rate is a great indicator of your current oxygen uptake, which provides an objective metric to indicate hard you work.Riding with a heart rate close to your maximum heart rate can be maintained for a limited time only.After you have used your monitor a couple of times, you will start to notice that when you ride with a low heart rate the pace can be maintained for hours. Below are some tips from the American River Cycling Club to help you use your heart rate monitor to improve the effectiveness of your training rides.

Know Your Resting Heart Rate

Registering your resting heart rate every morning or once every week can be good way to identify progress in your fitness. When you get stronger your resting heart will get lower. This is because your heart has anincreased stroke volumewhich means it requires less beats to deliver the same amount of blood for your body. If you are a rider that would like to notice progress but don’t like to do tough physical tests, then register your resting heart rate in the morning.I can promise you that this is one of the least exhausting ways to discover improvements.

Please notice that there are some fluctuations from morning to morning, so don’t give a single measure too high of impact on your evaluation. Like at all other times of the day, your heart rate will be affected by several factors like water balance, nutritional status, and psychological stress.

Perform a Threshold Test

It is best to perform a lactate threshold (LT) test, if you don’t already know your threshold heart rate. This type of test is best done on a 20-30 minute hard ride (or time trial). This 20-30 minute ride does not include warm up or warm down. After a good warm up (15-20 minutes), reset your heart rate monitor to begin tracking your heart rate and average heart rate. If you do a time trial with a finishing time of 25 minutes and average 176 beats per minute, this then is your LT. This will give you an idea of what kind of intervals needed to prepare you for the next time trial.

How hard these intervals should be is very individual and is influenced by training status and experience.Just remember that the adrenalin kick at competitions make it easier to maintain a high pulse. You can also calculate intervals or rides at a lower intensity based on your heart rate in the threshold test.

Analyze Your Heart Rate Data

Many heart rate monitors offer you the opportunity to analyze data from your training rides or races. Analyzing a cycling ride is unique to each rider, but very useful. Monitoring your beginning heart rate, average heart rate, maximum heart rate, and time in zone will allow you to make comparisons over time on similar rides. Recovery time is also a metric that indicates fitness level. Although recovery time is also influenced by rest days and age. Take the time to record heart rate data in your cycling journal along with other specifics of your ride such as distance, average speed, terrain, and duration.

AHeart Rate Monitor Is Not Effective for Anaerobic Intervals

If you do short intervals with a length of less than 3minutes and don’t repeat them over and over again, then it is not a good idea to use your heart rate monitor for pacing. The reason is that your heart rate is delayed in the first 2-3 minutes of the intervals and thus will not reflect your current work.Anaerobic intervalsshould be done on feeling or optimally by pacing with a power meter crank or similar power monitoring device.

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Trial and Error

Get out on the roads!One of the best ways to learn about heart rate monitors is simply to use them. Before you start training, please read about these five common mistakes inheart rate monitor training.

Comparing Heart Rate Values with Others

The fact is that you can only compare heart rate values with your own previous data. The reason for this is that we all have a different anatomy of our cardiovascular system. But, these systems are all based on the same physiological mechanisms. Thus, we can learn from each other’s physiological experiences and adaptations, but we can’t compare individual heart rate values (e.g. your resting heart rate is 58bpm and your friend’s heart rate is 42bpm, which does not tell which one of you is in the best shape norhas the highest VO2 max).

There is a huge standard deviation because we all are anatomically different. Your maximum heart rate is correlated to your age, but that does not mean that we all fit in to 220-age formula. Just like with the resting heart rates, maximum heart rates does not predict performance.

Not Analyzing Heart Rate Data

Heart rate monitor training is much about analyzing. If you have an advanced or professional heart rate monitor, you can collect tons of data that can be analyzed on your personal computer. This is an important process if you want to get the full value out of your heart rate monitor. When you get used to seeing your heart rate records, you will begin to get a deeper understanding of how your body works. If you add some studying in exercise physiology to your analyzing, you will be able to make better decisions about your future cycling training.

Not Being Aware of Factors Affecting Heart Rate

Your working heart rate at the same external workload changes from day to day because it is affected by several factors including caffeine, water balance, temperature, physical stress, psychological stress, and other life factors.You should know how these things affect your heart rate if you want to use your current heart rate for training.

If you feel your heart rate is too high compared to the workload, then consider if there is a good reason for this (over training, dehydration, too much coffee, lack of sleep, etc.). Record these variables in your training journal and over time you will be able to identify and monitor life variables that affect your fitness level. When you have identified these variables, take action on it.

Wrong Use of Heart Rate Monitor During Races

It is difficult, if not impossible, to make accurate decisions based on your current heart rate in a cycling race. When you enter a race, you are able to ride faster than you normally do during training. I’ve heard several riders give up when they were trying to jump from the peloton because they thought their heart rate indicated that they should slow down. That is definitively a big mistake since there are large tactical factors in play during cycling races, which is why experience is so much more important in races than heart rate data.

Wrong Use of Target Zones During Training

Heart rate target zones are a way to categorize different types of training and a good general guideline to incorporate into your training rides. Many riders use basic training programs where they are supposed to work at percentage of their maximum heart rate. But, these programs are born to be somewhat inadequate since there is a huge deviation in relative working heart rates (just like with minimum and maximum heart rates).

These target zones should be based on your personal experiences and testing procedures, not a rigid formula. Also, it is best to not make the target zones to small because of the factors influencing on the heart rate. One day you are in top of the target zone and the next day you are in the bottom, but the subjective feeling might be the same. If the interval is too small, you are likely to cross the limits which will make you work either easier or harder to stay in the target zone.