Heart Rate Training Zones

A Zephyr heart rate sensor can be connected to the My Tracks  Android smart phone training data application.

Once you get past the novelty of seeing a heart rate during exercise you'll want to use it for selecting a  target rate or at least characterising your exercise effort. There are simpler methods, but using the more accurate Karvonen method,  the target rate is determined by the maximum rate, resting rate and desired training zone. Training zones can vary in number and definition with five being a common number as shown in Table 1.

	Zone 1	Zone 2	Zone 3	Zone 4	Zone 5
Fitness Training Zone	50-60%	60-70%	70-80%	80-90%	90-100%
	Light	Easy	Aerobic	Anaerobic	VO2 Max
	Walking	Jogging	Running	Hard	All Out
3-Fitness & Wellness	60-70%	70-75%	75-80%	80-90%	90 - 100%
	Overdistance, strength	Endurance, strength	Endurance, strength	Intervals, hills, race/pace	Racing, speed

Table 1. - Training zone definitions from Fitness Training Zone and 3-Fitness & Wellness. The Fitness Training Zone website provides a good explanation of each of the zones.

Maximum rate can be determined by methods involving heart rate measurement at sub maximal exercise levels then adding a margin or a variety of related methods which ultimately aim to get heart rate to the maximum possible for a short period. The one tried here is  the 2-4 Minute Test . The results are shown in figures 1 and 2.

Figure 1 Determining maximum heart rate for a male age 50

Figure 2 Determining maximum heart rate for a female aged 16

To generate these graphs export data from My Tracks in TCX format then open in Microsoft Excel 2007. TCX is an XML format and XML tables can be directly imported into an Excel spreadsheet.

The resting heart rate averaged over 4 minutes for the 50 year male was 55 bpm and for the 16 year old female 81 bpm. Applying the Karvonen method leads to the heart rate zones in table 2.

	Zone 1	Zone 2	Zone 3	Zone 4	Zone 5
Male 50	124-138	139 - 152	152 -166	167 - 180	181 - 194
Female 16	129 - 139	140 148	149 - 157	158 - 168	168 - 177
	Light	Easy	Aerobic	Anaerobic	VO2 Max
	Walking	Jogging	Running	Hard	All Out

 Table 2. - Training zones for a male aged 50 and female aged 16.

At 159 bpm driving a Go Kart takes the 50 year old male into the aerobic running zone, at 126 bpm walking up a mountain takes the 50 year old into the light walking zone and riding a bike for transport to 136 bpm which is also in the light walking zone.