Heart rate zone training

[aileentobin]

Hi there,

Could anyone recommend the best formula to use for calculating one's own heart rate zones? 

I looked online but there are various different ways and none seem to give me a consistent figure for each zone! I'm only looking for an easy guide to get me in the right frame of mind when training.

Thanks in advance. :-)
Aileen

[jonathanmorris]

Hi Aileen,

Club coach John Caffrey has a good spreadsheet in the training resources folder in the members area on the website exactly on this. The zones are as follows:

Zone 1 - Active Recovery/Lt Aerobic - <68% of FTHR
Zone 2 - Endurance/Aerobic - 69-83% of FTHR
Zone 3 - Sweetspot/Tempo - 84-94% of FTHR
Zone 4 - Threshold - 95-105% of FTHR
Zone 5 - Vo2 - >106% of FTHR

Don't worry about all the other methods of calculating zones. This one is close enough.These values aren't based off max heart rate, they are based off Functional Threshold Heart rate, which unfortunately means you have to do an ftp test to calculate your zones properly. These are one of the hardest sessions you will ever do. It involves doing a good warm up, then going as hard as you can on the bike for 20 minutes. Record your average heart rate for that 20 minute effort, multiply this figure by 0.95, then use the percentages above to calculate your zones from this average heart rate figure.

Hope this helps, best of luck.

Jonny.

[aileentobin]

Hi Jonny,

Thanks for the detailed advice, I'll give this a try over the weekend.

Aileen