Heart Rate Training

It has been interesting reading all the comments about HR monitors. I thought it would put a couple of my thoughts down for those who are interested.

I currently coach a squad of triathletes, particularly juniors who have been performing exceptionally well over the past few seasons. I do a number of my sessions with HR monitors, often as a guide/indication of what they are doing. Each learns what they seem to be able to tolerate. The simple method of easy = low HR; hard but over a long period of time = anaerobic threshold; max =hurts heaps and can only be held for a short period of time before fatigue and performance deterioration.

I stress this is only a guide for them, and it is not the 'be all and end all'.

Heart rate can be affected daily. So the more you use it, the more you will learn about it and a greater understanding you will have about what affects HR and often performance. Fatigue, particularly residual fatigue can alter your daily HR and the zone you are able to achieve. Fatigue: from the killer session the day before or a culmination of several days, weeks, etc. Dehydration: your HR will increase if you are not hydrated. Hydration aids the body cooling of the body during exercise (one of many things). Females may have increased HR during menstruation. Cardiac drift over very long periods of exercise: the HR will increase over time by small increments for the same perceived exertion level. Stress: eg - work, school, relationships, etc

For my more serious athletes we use HR monitors extensively. We do a HR max test once very 2 months. I have found only small increase in max HR over the year. So what they achieve in the first test is only slightly below what they achieve at the end of the season. The reasons I believe this is for, is race toughness, they seem to be able to push themselves they extra few beats at the end of the season than at the start, where they have enjoyed their time out.

The max HR field test they do is easy to set up at home. If you are going to try this at home, make sure you are reasonably fit, if not please get a medical screening first. You need someone to take your results as you go. You need a windtrainer, stopwatch, HR monitor, and ideally a cadence computer. Get yourself up to about 140bpm heart rate on 90 cadence, with plenty of gears to spare. At the end of each minute record HR and cadence. Now try and stay on 90 cadence for the whole test or until you get through all the gears. After each minute click to one harder gear. Keep doing this until you think you cannot go any further, then finish with a max effort sprint for at least another minute. This will hurt. If you have got to max. you will either bomb shortly after or your heart rate will drop by a few beats. End of test. …hope your recorder got it! If you ran out of gears while doing the test then, in your hardest gear go up by 10rpm in cadence each minute.

Now what do you do with this information. Easy, it is all simple from now on. I will give you a description of the zones my squad follows and most other cycle coaches follow.

Simple rules do not push the gears if you are not trained for it, I cannot reiterate spinning: spin, spin, spin. Remember this is a guide; training is an art with science thrown in.

The last thing I will mention is that my best kids take their HR each morning; they know their resting heart rate. It is taken in the same place each morning, so variables are limited. If the HR is 5 beats above normal - take an easy session; tell me it is high, because it is telling them something. If it is 10 beats above normal, don't train and don't turn up or I will not be happy. High heart rate means something. Best to take a day off than take a week off.

Happy training everybody.

Regards

Hamish Johnston