What is Training Heart Rate?

You can get an instant snapshot of how your body responds to a particular workout by tracking real-time heart rate data during your training sessions.

It means you can workout smarter, not harder, and fine-tune your training routine to hit your target heart rate zone for a more optimised fitness level. 

But what is training heart rate? Unpack everything you should know about heart rate training to level up your fitness by keeping your ticker in check.

What is Heart Rate?

Your heart rate is the number of times your heart muscle contracts to pump oxygenated blood out to the entire body.

It’s the speed of your heartbeat and is denoted by bpm (beat per minute). 

Most wearable HR monitors operate based on PPG (photoplethysmography) technology that counts your pulse utilising optical sensors to display your heart rate data (pulse value is proximal to heart rate value). 

Key Heart Rate Data

Resting Heart Rate

The RHR/resting heart rate is the number of times your heart beats over a minute to pump the minimum amount of oxygen-rich blood while you are at rest. As a rule of thumb, it’s 60-100 bpm in adults. Though RHR can vary based on various factors, a lower RHR implies efficient and healthy heart function and cardiovascular soundness. 

But if your heartbeat is constantly higher than 100 bpm (bradycardia/high heart rate) or lower than 60 bpm (tachycardia/low heart rate) and couples with drowsiness, breathlessness, or exhaustion, it can be a sign of underlying illness. However, an RHR rating below 60 bpm is fine for some people. For example, heart rate at resting can be as low as 40 bpm for triathletes and runners. 

Factors that influence resting heart rate include:

• Physical activity — Constant physical movement can cause an upsurge in RHR reading.
• Fitness level — Physically sound individuals may have lower RHR than people with physical issues or obesity.
• The habit of constant smoking or consuming caffeine can result in a higher heart rate at rest
• Air temperature — Exposure to hot temperature results in an upsurge in resting heart rate reading
• Emotions —  Stress or anxiety can result in an increased RHR reading
• Medicines — While some drugs like beta blockers can significantly slow down your RHR, levothyroxine or antithyroid drugs can cause an upsurge
• Age — At different stages of life, HR also varies.

Recovery Heart Rate

Your recovery heart rate is the drop of your heart rate at one minute after cessation of a vigorous intensity workout. An improving recovery HR (when the heart takes less time to get back to RHR) implies a healthy ticker and more optimised fitness.

Maximum Heart Rate

Your MRH is the absolute fastest or peak rate your heart can reach while pumping blood under maximum stress. It’s challenging to assess your HR Max and may require you to do ECG (Electrocardiography) tests. MHR data helps endurance athletes set up their training regimen tailored to their body stats and heart conditions and understand how hard they can push their bodies to hit the THR zones during aerobic activities. 

What is Training Heart Rate?

Your training heart rate is the pulse rate your heart muscle can attain when you’re doing an aerobic workout and denotes the minimum level of exertion at which the cardiovascular system can improve for a person in a distinct age class.

In general, it’s a percentage of your maximum heart rate and depends on the intensity of the workout you perform. While your THR can be 50-60% of your HR Max for a low intensity workout, it’s around 70-80% of the maximum for a vigorous intensity exercise. 

For instance, for an elliptical exercise that lasts for half an hour, you can aim to sustain an HR between 70-90% of your MHR. And Your HR Max is roughly your age subtracted from 220.

Exercise Intensity and Heart Rate

How you should set and customise your training sessions is a factor of three variants:

• Frequency —  It indicates the number of times you workout or hit the gym over a week.
• Duration —  It implies the time you spend partaking in a workout session at a time. Your current fitness level and targets are the big players in determining your workout duration.
• Intensity—  Exercise intensity is the measure of how tough an activity feels to you when you’re performing it. It’s your perceived exertion and can vary from person to person. It’s a complex and subjective issue that brings the target heart rate to the scene.

Training Target Heart Rate Zones

Let’s look into the 5-target heart rate zones and how they differ with age. So you can tailor your training plan based on your maximum heart rate data and better understand where your workout intensity lies within the spectrum of each heart-rate training zone threshold.

Age	Light Intensity Zone (50%-60%)	Light Intensity (60%-70%)	Moderate Intensity (70%-80%)	Vigorous Intensity (80%-90%)	Maximum Intensity (>90%)	Maximum Heart Rate
25	98-117	117-137	137-156	156-171	171	195
35	93-111	111-130	130-148	148-167	167	185
45	88-105	105-123	123-140	140-158	158	175
55	83-99	99-116	116-132	132-149	149	165
65	78-93	93-109	109-124	124-140	140	155
75	73-87	87-102	102-116	116-131	131	145

Each THR zone has a purpose, and how long you should train at a particular zone depends on your targets. For instance, a marathon runner may train at zone 1 and 2 for half the total running time to reach marathon speed and less than half the total time in THR zones 3 and 4 to increase leg speed (tempo and speed training). 

For someone who has just started out marathon running or returned after a long recovery break, training at zones 1 and 2 for around 6-12 weeks is recommended to get his body acclimatised before getting into interval running and exerting in zones 3 and 4. As an expert runner, you can get into an interval training right away, but how hard your exertion should be is a factor of your physical fitness, age, progress made, performance and training targets, and preferences.

Benefits of Training Heart Rate

Instead of guesstimating the exercise intensity, you can use training zones. But don’t get bogged down in the numbers — take them as an additional layer of a push to prod you on towards your fitness target. 

Let’s dig deeper into the benefits of training heart rate:

It’s Tailored to Your Fitness Level

Tailoring your activity session to how it impacts your heart muscle can help you make the most of a workout. So you can understand which THR zone matches your fitness level and gradually go up to switch up your training routine. 

You can Workout Safely

Keeping a close look at your HR data can help you avoid overexerting your body.

Let’s see how.

Aerobic activity is any cardio conditioning coupled with strength and stretching. During aerobic exercise, your heart can pump sufficient oxygen to help your body maintain optimal metabolism without dipping into another source of energy. Training at moderate intensity THR zone (70-80% of HR Max) helps keep excess pounds at bay, reinforces your endurance by boosting your aerobic fitness and stamina, and wards off disease.

On the flip side, though anaerobic workouts increase your power, as a beginner exerciser, when your HR hits the anaerobic zone and pumps blood too fast, it cannot supply enough oxygen to the body muscles for optimal metabolism. The result is acidosis, lactic acid buildup, that can make your muscles acidic. If lactic acid builds up during intense exercise, you should slow down and let your muscles completely break it down to prevent further muscle injury. That’s where your TRH zones enter the scene. When you constantly monitor your HR during workout sessions and train at your set training heart rate, you can ensure your training is safe, not overreaching, and avoid underlying injuries.

And contrarily, you can also comprehend if you can push yourself a little harder to nail your training goals faster. So you can pick things up to get the most out of your training session and boost your cardiovascular fitness. Plus, you can bounce back in no time by sticking to the right zone for a faster recovery. 

Go for a moderate-intensity training session to keep your ticker up!

You can Shed Weight

Tracking your heart rate can also help you set a training plan to hit your weight loss goal faster and be in shape, nailing the fat-burning HR zone. Train at 60-70% of your HR Max instead of vigorous-intensity exercise for burning more fat, not carbohydrates.