% of Max HR

One more thing aswell.... I just brought a Polar A5 Heart Monitor watch. It works out your max HR by using the 201-age method. Does anyone else have this watch? If so, is there anyway that I can enter my own max HR into it?

Robh said:

One more thing aswell.... I just brought a Polar A5 Heart Monitor watch. It works out your max HR by using the 201-age method. Does anyone else have this watch? If so, is there anyway that I can enter my own max HR into it?

No, but you can overide the zone alarms to whatever you want in bpm, just use the settings menu and set the upper & lower limits to what you want.

Robh said:

How do you work out a % of your maximum heart rate?

Lets say I wanted to workout 70% of a maximum HR of 201. I was under the impression you just had to do (201/100) * 70. Which equals 140bpm. But I came across a website which says you should do it the following way...

MHR - RHR = 201 - 60 = 141
70% of 141 = 98
98 + RHR = 98 + 60 = 158bpm.

Im guessing that the second one is correct? :o

Sorry as noone has answered my question im going to have to bump it back up to the top! Its just that some websites use the above method while my Polar heart monitor just uses the normal (201/100)*70 way. Its a 18bhp difference 😕

Robh said:

Sorry as noone has answered my question im going to have to bump it back up to the top! Its just that some websites use the above method while my Polar heart monitor just uses the normal (201/100)*70 way. Its a 18bhp difference 😕

Ooops i mean 18bpm :eek: not bhp!

Robh said:

One more thing aswell.... I just brought a Polar A5 Heart Monitor watch. It works out your max HR by using the 201-age method. Does anyone else have this watch? If so, is there anyway that I can enter my own max HR into it?

Actually I just bought one also. I don't "think" you can change the MaxHR, but you CAN set your own limits, using either actual heart rates or %'s.

Mansmind said:

Actually I just bought one also. I don't "think" you can change the MaxHR, but you CAN set your own limits, using either actual heart rates or %'s.

There seems to be a lot of controversy about calculating target zones, as well as how to calculate/estimate MaxHR.

My opinion is that the second method is more accurate. Why? I have no basis other than...

1. It seems logical that your resting heart rate would certainly affect what your target zones should be. Resting heart rates can "apparently" differ greatly even in sedentary individuals. If it made no difference at all, then a person with a higher resting HR would have to exert themselves much less to achieve the lower limit of their target zone. So it seems logical.

2. My personal experience is that I feel almost nothing "perceived exertion" until I get in the HR range the second method utilizes.

Hope this helps for whatever it's worth.

Robh said:

How do you work out a % of your maximum heart rate?

Lets say I wanted to workout 70% of a maximum HR of 201. I was under the impression you just had to do (201/100) * 70. Which equals 140bpm. But I came across a website which says you should do it the following way...

MHR - RHR = 201 - 60 = 141
70% of 141 = 98
98 + RHR = 98 + 60 = 158bpm.

Im guessing that the second one is correct? :o

neither way is 'correct', they're both valid ways of calculating HRzones. The latter method is the Karvonnen method.

Although the latter method more closely tracks VO2, if you're resting HR rises either through illness or fatigue etc, then your zones would go up, rather than down... and going down is where they'd need to go. additiontally, as you get fitter and your resting HR decreases your zones decrease, thus when less fit -- higher zones!

If i prescribe training with HRzones, i use either absolute or percentages of HRmax and don't add in RHR (although they aren't necessarily at e.g., 70, 80, etc% of HRmax)

ric

Cheers guys. I think im going to use the method that works out your zones by using your RHR as I have the same views as Mansmind. 🙂