Age adjusted HR?

[stumped]

Hi all,



Let me start with a bit of background on myself. I trained and raced for road bike from 1994 to 2000. In that time I only once recorded a max HR of 198 bpm in 1998 at the time age adjusted should have been 187 bpm. I also, was lucky enough to get in with a couple of grad students at the human performance lab in Austin Texas at the University of Texas and have blood work done to determine my LT which was around 155 bpm.



After roughly a four-year departure from training and racing I have again started training. I have approximately 3 months of good base in. My question is how much faith should I put into age adjusted HR? I used to more or less rely on age adjusted HR to determine how hard I needed to train. The other day I took on a rather large hill with the intent to just make it to the top. When I down load the HR profile I was shocked to see I had managed to obtain a HR of 196 bpm. My resting HR is averaged at 51 bpm. So, should I adjust my training percentages based on the age-adjusted method or should I go with the actual 196 bpm as max to set training percentages? Just to clarify, the rise in HR to 196 bpm was very steady state with no spike to indicate a false reading.



Any comments or suggestions would be appreciated greatly.



Thanks in advance



Stumped

 

[palewin]

If by "age adjusted" you mean any of the various formulae of the "220 - age" variety, they are all very poor bases for training. My guess is that your 196 and 198bpm actual results are statistically identical, so if you are intent on basing your training on a max HR, you might as well use the 196. However, every training regimen I know (and certainly the CTS system that I use) is based on LTHR, not max. You could either use the 155 number from your prior test as a starting point, or do any of the time-trial based tests to retest your LTHR (you can find these in Friel's "Training Bible", Carmichael's "Ultimate Ride", and I'm sure there are many other sources). To give you an idea why max is such a poor basis, I'll share my numbers. My max (I'm a 55+ Masters racer) is somewhere in the 175-180 range (based on what I see on my HRM file during racing season) but my LTHR is very similar to yours, 155-158. So if I based training intensities on my max, I would be riding at very different intensities from you, but if we both use LTHR as a guide, our training intensities would be similar.

 

[stumped]

Thanks for the reply.



I'll go with the LT then and setup the CompuTrainer for a TT test and see what the results are.



stumped

 

[ric_stern/RST]

Hi all,

Let me start with a bit of background on myself. I trained and raced for road bike from 1994 to 2000. In that time I only once recorded a max HR of 198 bpm in 1998 at the time age adjusted should have been 187 bpm. I also, was lucky enough to get in with a couple of grad students at the human performance lab in Austin Texas at the University of Texas and have blood work done to determine my LT which was around 155 bpm.

After roughly a four-year departure from training and racing I have again started training. I have approximately 3 months of good base in. My question is how much faith should I put into age adjusted HR? I used to more or less rely on age adjusted HR to determine how hard I needed to train. The other day I took on a rather large hill with the intent to just make it to the top. When I down load the HR profile I was shocked to see I had managed to obtain a HR of 196 bpm. My resting HR is averaged at 51 bpm. So, should I adjust my training percentages based on the age-adjusted method or should I go with the actual 196 bpm as max to set training percentages? Just to clarify, the rise in HR to 196 bpm was very steady state with no spike to indicate a false reading.

Any comments or suggestions would be appreciated greatly.

Thanks in advance

Stumped

If you're intending to use HRzones then your best option is to perform some actual test to determine whatever it is you want to test (in this case HRmax). This can be done in field testing, but is best done either with a qualified coach and sports scientist (etc) such as those at RST or at a good lab.

It's likely from your previous testing that your LT, which occured at 155 b/min (note, HR shouldn't be used for LT determination) was determined as the 1 mmol/L incease over exercise baseline or at a fixed rate of 2.5 mmol/L. At this intensity you should be able to ride for up to several plus hours. This is highly unlikely to be the effort associated with e.g.,a 1-hr TT.

Using age adjusted HR formulas to determine training zones would NOT be a good idea. there's a standard deviation of +-15 b/min to the prediction.

At RST, where we use HR zones, we use them -- as do *many* coaches and sports scientists based on HRmax.

Palewin, the reason both you and Stumped have an "LTHR" that is approximately the same is simply because you are (most likely) using two completely different definitions of LT.

Within the scientific literature LT is defined as the workload (that's power output in watts in cycling or velocity in m/s or km/hr in running, and additionally absolutely nothing to do with HR) that elicits either a 1 mmol/L increase (i.e., lactate ~ 2.x mmol/L) in lactate or the workload that elicits a fixed rate of 2.5 mmol/L. At these intensities this workload can be sustained for many hours.

However, some coaches erroneously use LT to be the effort associated with a ~1-hr TT, which by definition could only be sustained for ~1-hr. This is obviously a much greater intensity than the correct definition. It's therefore, highly likely that Stumped is using the correct definition (with the HR bodge) and Palewin is TT effort. Incidentally there is no physiological term for ~1-hr TT effort.

Ric

 

[palewin]

Ric: Thanks for clearing up some things which were puzzling me about the original posting. Part of the blame for mislabelling TT results as "LTHR" lies with me. CTS uses their pair of 3-mile TT tests to determine a basis for their training ranges, but never use the term LTHR - that was my unfortunate contribution. Friel, on the other hand, definitely calls the results of his TT tests the "Lactate Threshold Pulse Rate" (Training Bible, pg34) which may be the root of my confusion. But what really bothered me was that Friel suggests that the difference between his "LTPR" (for lack of a better name) and HRMax is typically around 15bpm - which implied that given the original poster's and my vastly different Max rates, it was unlikely that our LTHR would be so close; your definitional difference explains why. Since I suspect you have done the comparisons, once one gets past the different names for the "base measurement" used by different coaches (i.e. a lab LTHR, a TT test, or a maxHR test) do your RST zones or ranges match up reasonably close to Carmichael's Ranges or Friel's Zones? I would hope that at the end of the day, the training regimens from "well respected" (at least by me) coaches line up fairly well, despite differences in terminology?

 

[ric_stern/RST]

Ric: Thanks for clearing up some things which were puzzling me about the original posting. Part of the blame for mislabelling TT results as "LTHR" lies with me. CTS uses their pair of 3-mile TT tests to determine a basis for their training ranges, but never use the term LTHR - that was my unfortunate contribution. Friel, on the other hand, definitely calls the results of his TT tests the "Lactate Threshold Pulse Rate" (Training Bible, pg34) which may be the root of my confusion.

It is the root of many people's confusion. other coaches make this error too.

Since I suspect you have done the comparisons, once one gets past the different names for the "base measurement" used by different coaches (i.e. a lab LTHR, a TT test, or a maxHR test) do your RST zones or ranges match up reasonably close to Carmichael's Ranges or Friel's Zones?

The HR zones that RST use aren't RST zones (i.e., i didn't decide on them). These zones (actually levels to give them their correct title) were developed by leading sports scientist and coach Peter Keen. I've no idea how or if they match up with the other two HR zones.

I would hope that at the end of the day, the training regimens from "well respected" (at least by me) coaches line up fairly well, despite differences in terminology?

on the other hand, the zones that i did develop (power output zones based on MAP) match up closely with Andy Coggan's power zones based on TTpower. I've briefly seen CTS power zones and they're completely different to RST and AC zones/levels.

Ric