How fast is too fast?

About 15 years ago I started seeing a ton of people wearing heartrate monitors while exercising. You can pretty much buy them anywhere these days. I actually saw one at Randalls in their health isle. What I get asked a great deal is "what should my hearrate be when I'm exercising?" Two questions you need to ask yourself.

What's your resting heartrate?

What's is your fitness level?

If you get winded walking up a flight of stairs I would suggest seeing a doctor before you start plugging in numbers to a heart rate training program. If you are a competitive athlete your numbers will be slightly different.

So lets take someone who is 36 and in good physical conditioning.(LIKE ME!!!)

Max Heart rate: This is the maximal ammount of times your heart can beat in one minute. There are a few factors to this (age,gender,fitness level). The rule of thumb for this 220-age for those who are fit you can try 205-1/2age. With both of these formulas in mind a MHR for a fit 36 year old can be 220-36=184 or 205-18=187

With that number in mind you can set your training into 1 of 4 training zones.

Very Light or Daily activity zone: 50-60% of MHR This is a great zone for beginners,people recovery sessions, or someone comming off a layoff. This zone should be easy and shouldn't leave you out of breath

Exercise for Health zone:60-70%of MHR This is typically called the "fitness zone" This zone will help strengthen your heart. It will also increase the sum total of small blood vessels in your extremities. It increases metabolism by increasing the enzymes in your muscles.

Aerobic Or Exercise for Fitness Training zone: 70-85% of MHR. This is the zone that is commonly referred to as the Target Heartrate Training zone(THR). This zone improves overall endurance as well as raising the speed your body can exercise at without building lactate.

Improved -Performance Training Zone:85-100% of MHR. At this point you are training at a level that is between you're aerobic and anaerobic zone.A very fit person will be training at or near their anaerobic threshhold. This is the zone used for sprints,hill training,breakaways,and time trialing. This style of training will increase your muscles tolerance to very large ammounts of lactic acid.

Think about these 4 zones and where you want your specific training to be. When all else fails try doing pushups for a minute........or run a hill.