Understanding Training Heart Rates

In my continued attempt to individualize training heart rates, I had several bulky heart monitors in my office, and when athletes worked with me there or on the track, these were used for accurate heart-rate evaluation. Whether the athlete was on a treadmill or stationary bike in the clinic, on the track, or at other locations, I would record a number of pre- and post-workout features. These would include the athlete’s gait—their moving posture during the workout—along with standing posture and muscle balance, and I would correlate this mechanical efficiency with heart rate at various points before, during, and after workouts. It was obvious that training at various intensities affected both posture and gait: the more anaerobic, the more distortion of the body’s mechanics. These changes are due, in part, to previously existing muscle imbalance and muscle problems that develop during the workout. This is sometimes very subtle and other times more obvious. All this information was correlated, and ultimately, an ideal training heart rate was found that promoted optimal aerobic function without triggering significant anaerobic activity, muscle imbalance, or other problems.

It soon became evident that the athletes needed more consistent training quality, rather than relying on the feel of the workout on the day they used the heart-rate monitor. Soon it became necessary for each athlete to have his or her own heart-rate monitor and train with it every day. The advent of modern heart-rate monitors, which sense the heart rate directly from the chest wall and transmitted the information to a wristwatch, was a great benefit in this regard, with Polar’s entry into the marketplace in 1982. One of the most significant observations I made during this period was that athletes who wore heart-rate monitors during each workout felt better and improved in performance at a faster rate than others who trained without a monitor.

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It was now possible to find an ideal training heart rate for athletes building their aerobic system; however, it was a relatively lengthy process of one-on-one assessment. My goal now was to find a way that any athlete could determine an optimal training heart rate, using some simple formula.

As I began lecturing and writing more about endurance training, it was difficult to explain the details of all this information on assessment without some simple and specific guidelines. The idea of a formula that would be accurate for an individual and result in a very similar or identical heart rate as my manual assessments seemed ideal. While the 220 Formula was commonly used, the number I found to be ideal in my assessment was often very different from the 220 Formula; it was usually significantly lower. In addition, it was becoming evident that athletes who used the 220 Formula for a daily training heart rate showed poor gait, increased muscle imbalance, and other problems following a workout at that heart rate, and that these athletes were more often overtrained.