Heart Rate Training and Recovery
If you’ve been following along with my blog, instagram, or other social media - you know I’ve recently switched over to The Plant Paradox Protocol. Along with other metrics, I’ve become mildly obsessed with tracking my Heart Rate Recovery during training as a way to determine how effective this protocol is on my overall health.
But Why?
Heart rate recovery is important to athletes (and trainers) because it is one of the strongest indicators of overall cardiovascular fitness. How well your heart recovers (or doesn’t recover) can signify where you’re at in training, and arguably more importantly, where you’re at with over training.
The Basics
With heart rate training and recovery - the number one rule to follow or understand is that the faster your heart rate recovers (returns to resting rate), the better shape you’re in. The longer it takes to come down, the worse your cardiovascular fitness is.
Your minimum heart rate, or resting heart rate, is determined best first thing in the morning when you first wake up and no effort has been put into moving. Typically, most people have a resting rate somewhere between 60-100 bpm.
As a general rule, your maximum heart rate should be your biological age subtracted from 220. For example - during workouts, my heart rate variability will fluctuate between 65 during the warm-up and 196 at maximum effort.
How to Use this Info
Understanding your resting and maximum heart rate can help in two ways: 1) recovery, and 2) training.
In regards to recovery, a lower recovery heart rate following vigorous exercise is better. Trainers typically like to see your heart rate fall at least 12bpm in the first minute, and to under 100bpm in the first three minutes after class.
When looking at your training as a whole, you want to be able to recover well between sets as well as after workouts are completed. You also want to see your resting heart rate maintain or drop, depending on where it started when you began your training. These are good indicators that your heart is responding well to training. However, if you notice that your resting heart rate is rising, and it’s taking longer for you to recover during sets/after workouts - this is a sure fire sign that you’re overtraining. You’ll need to consult your trainer and your doctor to work on getting back into a good rhythm of exercise that fits your body’s demands.
In regards to training, once you have your HR min/max, you can calculate your HR Training Zones, as seen below. These will help you determine percent of maximum effort per workout. Note that while you can absolutely go over your maximum heart rate - most people can only maintain for 1-2 minutes tops before you pass out, throw up, or your survival instincts make you stop.
Heart rate zone 1: 50–60% of HRmax
Heart rate zone 2: 60–70% of HRmax
Heart rate zone 3: 70–80% of HRmax
Heart rate zone 4: 80–90% of HRmax
Heart rate zone 5: 90–100% of HRmax
What Else?
All of the above calculations and ideas are in a “perfect world” type bubble - where you’re healthy, happy, non-caffeinated, etc. Otherwise - there are plenty of other daily stressors that have an impact on your resting and working heart rate, including (but not limited to) medications, stress, sleep patterns, hydration, caffeine, genetics, emotions, heat/cold… etc the list goes on. If you can moderate the majority of these and get a good idea of your min/max - you’re off to a great start!
#trainunbreakable #liveunbreakable