Confused with Heart Rate Zones? 12/16/12

What I knew and felt quite confident

Last year, when I was combating with very first Challenge, I noticed Rick Sobona was confused about heart rate zones. Even he is a trained personal trainer, I recall he mentioned that heart rate-based training was rather new to him. I had done NewLeaf testing about a dozen times already by then and I thought I had a firm understanding of heart rate zones. So rather confidently, I shared my testing data and wrote about heart rate zones in blog post titled, “NewLeaf and heart rate zones 12/23/11”.

Then confusion settled in

So my unpaid coach (aka Husband) one day comments “So Coach specifies aerobic training zone saying, zone 2 or zone 3, depending on which book to read.“ I always pictured a HUGE bookshelf with tons of training books in Coach Troy’s office, so this comment made sense, but made me wonder, “Which book did I read?”

Fast-forward to 2012 Super 6. In November during Engage Phase, Eric Graber was very excited to go through formal assessment. So I grabbed him and asked if he could share the results. (Later he kindly agreed to use it for this blog. THANK YOU!) So I took a look. What? Zone 5 a,b,c? New Leaf doesn’t have 5 a, b, c???

Eric’s data 11/24/12

My data from 10/16/12

Then I start noticing Coach’s heart zone specification in Training Peaks for some aero workouts was zone 2-3 (mostly in Competition 39.0 - Aerobic Base at 10,000 Ft.). To me, AT (anaerobic threshold) was what separates zone 3 and 4. So I stayed in low Zone 3, but then started to wonder why this could be aerobic workout. Then the TP spec for Competition 33.0 - The Pain Cave spec was zones 2-5. Zone 5??? Sure I can understand “hitting all energy systems”, but zone 5??? Lifetime Heart Rate training chart is what I am used to and it is also on Coach Troy’s web site. I am starting to get really confused. So I took a good look at Eric’s and my chart. His AT is 161, mine is 160. Zones should not be very different. Then what I noticed was Zone 3 description of Eric’s chart: Tempo. People say Tempo Run, Tempo ride and refer to as zone 3. Really, zone 3, two-hour ride? I don’t know if I can last. Is that safe to do such thing? Then one of my favorite workouts, Competition 5.0 - Mental Toughness is supposed to be tempo. I was quite scared thinking this was Tough Love before Tough Love, but it is a fun workout and didn’t feel that tough. I gave an alternative name of Mental Funness. But that is zone 3???

Confusion is starting to clear up

Then unpaid Coach hands me this book titled ”Heart Zones Cycling: The Avid Cyclist's Guide to Riding Faster and Farther” It has been a while I forgot the convention of the book is to start reading from the first chapter and I just noticed two colored charts in the middle of the book. Husband says, “Heart rate zones based on threshold and based on max heart rate.”. When this happened, I was trying to learn more about training with power and put the book back in the shelf. But making through Engage and Challenge workouts, I figured TP specs is based on Eric’s zones. And my zone 2 is Eric’s zone 2 and 3, my 3 is his 4 and my 4 is his 5a. I came convinced Coach in DVD despite he encourages NewLeaf testing (especially to Lifetime crowd), posts Lifetime chart (linked above) from the web site, his zones were Eric’s, not mine. I finally came convinced so when I noticed that Coach’s power and heart rate zones calculation javascrpt page most easily access from Competition 27.0 - Threshold Test & Suffer Fest (http://lwcoaching.com/trainingplans/levelCalcs.htm) is Eric’s style.

But the voice of Husband going “Heart rate zones based on threshold and based on max heart rate.” started to get louder and I started to wonder maybe Eric’s is based on threshold and mine is based on max heart rate or the other way around. So I finally started READING ”Heart Zones Cycling” book. On page 67, table 5.5 is a comparison of max heart rate zones and threshold heart rate zones. After comparing % ranges of both Eric’s and mine, I came to the conclusion that both zones are based on threshold. And in fact, my zone 2 is 70-90 %, his 2 is 71-80% and 3 is 81-90%. My zone 3 is 90-100% and his zone 4 is 91-100%. My zone 4 is 100-110% and his zone 5a is 100-104%, 5b is 105-109%. :-O

But get this

So I decided to question a few of my behaviors during Spinervals workout. If you recall the video part of "How to overprepare for Spinervals Workout 12/15/12" blog, I was showing DigiFit interface shows % of max heart rate. Without much thought, I try to match with intensity meter that goes right and left on top of the screen. So I went back to “How to Read Dashboard” part of recent Spinervals videos and found out that is based on perceived effort, 60% (easy) and 100 % (maximum). If you think this sounds rather loose, perceived effort was mentioned more in early Spinervals videos, before training with power, before training using heart rate monitor. Most famous version comes as Borg Rating of Perceived Exertion (RPE) described in this article.

6 No exertion at all
7 Extremely light
8
9 Very light (easy walking slowly at a comfortable pace)
10
11 Light
12
13 Somewhat hard (It is quite an effort; you feel tired but can continue)
14
15 Hard (heavy)
16
17 Very hard (very strenuous, and you are very fatigued)
18
19 Extremely hard (You can not continue for long at this pace)
20 Maximal exertion

This may be OK to evaluate patient’s heart reactions to newly prescribed medication, but really very rudimental for serious training athletes. I am supposed to be learning about training with power numbers that shows actual work of the exercise, opposed to training with heart rate that shows your body’s reaction to the exercise. RPE is your perception to your body’s reaction to the exercise. Let me come back to my point: So I was trying to match with % of max heart rate from DigiFit to perceived effort, 60% (easy) and 100 % (maximum).

At this point, I still had a slight suspicion of Coach’s ambivalence on heart rate zones. So I got in deeper. In some DVDs, there is a feature you can see from main menu (this is I usually stick with DVD rather than on-deman version) titled, “Understanding Workzones”. It is actually just a graphic and it is not a video and Coach never appears. Now it came clear that five zones presented here are based on MAX hear rate. If you are following the content, you will notice up to this point, what Coach’s says, Eric’s data and my data are all based on THRESHOLD heart rate zone.

So bottom line for me today is: if you are used to measuring your heart rate zones based on MAX heart rate as shown on DVD feature or if you are used to heart rate zones divided into the style I am used to from NewLeaf and Lifetime document, you probably want to do a little educating with heart rate zones based on THRESHOLD heart rate that goes up to 5a, 5b and 5c, Eric’s style to understand Coach’s intentions in Spinervals workout and TP training plans. And don’t go too crazy over the intensity meter on screen and try not to match heart rate percentage that your device might give. I hope what I wrote here is accurate, but I would like to reserve the rights to re-write of any time because of the nature of the blog and I am also in process of learning. For the time being, I will be happy if this blog post helps understanding of heart rate zones or provide starting point of discussion.