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Wondering if anyone can give me some advice about the age-related max heart business?
I have a Garmin Forerunner 235 with optical HR and an Edge 500 with a chest HR strap. Both give pretty close to identical figures so it is not a measurement issue.
Last Tuesday I went for a ride in the Sun on the Ridgeway and then followed it with another the next day where I totally bonked 3/4 of the way round. Very unusual and I've not had that happen before. I was hydrated and thought I'd eaten properly to fuel for the ride - in retrospect maybe not. Also it wasn't a route I normally used so I wasn't able to plan the energy expenditure in my head plus I was riding with someone fitter and better than me. Even so it came as a shock how suddenly and how hard it got to me. Nothing that wasn't cured with a beer and dirty fries.
But then I went home and checked my heart rate figures for the rides. All I use GPS for is logging times so I can challenge myself but a look showed that I am usually exercising at an average of 90% max HR and peaking at 110 - 120%.
I don't really notice a banging heart until I'm hitting around 200bpm in a sprint to get a PB.
My max is supposed to 157 according to https://www.aqua-calc.com/calculate/maximum-heart-rate but I get really close to that easily so I wonder if there is much variation around the usual calculations of average age related HR max.
Since last week I've been riding to exercise zones but blimey it is boring.
Age related heartrate are pretty much useless but still get used since measuring it properly is hard.
Makes me feel better. I know it’s higher than average but I have a reasonable resting heart rate so I try not to worry. After all it’s been doing it a long time. 🤔
The formula is guff. Max hr does drop with age and probably by about 1bpm per year on average, but it's not something you should rely on.
As a teenager I could consistently hit 220+, I'm now 33 and I don't think I've seen above 185 for a long time (which is what the formula would expect).
Better bet is to figure out where your threshold hr is, I know I can ride for an hour or so at 145bpm with manageable discomfort. So if I'm at the front on a road ride that's the number I aim for.
On a hard ride I'll average about 150 overall which shows how rubbish a measure it is.
Too much coffee, not enough sleep, illness, medication, other stressors...? Probably not going to get a good diagnosis off here 🙂 If you're genuinely concerned then it's something to see your GP about
Well according to that web site my max is 156.47 when my max is 186. The other day on part of my ride I averaged 169 for an hour and ten minutes that should have been impossible if I'd gone by the 156bpm, just shows how bad these online calculators are.
Using the 220 minus age my heart rate for years was always in threshold / anaerobic area meaning I ran out of gas quite late on in rides, however I’ve been doing a lot of work in zone 2 on zwift and the improvements have been substantial. I’m a lot faster yet don’t feel as if I’m working as hard and then when I want to go for it I can go harder for longer. It’s all about getting base fitness rather than top end. Maybe boring but it does help.
Zwift on the laptop but watch tv / listen to music to get away from the boredom of the zone 2 work.
Also do an FTP test to help understand your max heart rate as the 220 - age is good for general population but rubbish for individual
You need to workout what your actual hr zones are in reality, not what they're calculated to be using some jarg formula. ie your max obv isn't 157 if you've measured it at 200.
STrava automatically does this based on your measured hr, my zones are reasonably accurate on it. It's worth doing as it will help you gauge your effort and fatigue. A lot of fit, but untrained, lads just ride fairly hard all the time in z3 z4. This isn't the way to get strong for most people.
The formula is ok once you include the prediction interval. Basically about 19/20 people will have a max HR of about 220 minus age +\- 20 bpm so within the range 240 to 160 - age. Everyone ignores the prediction interval. It’s been found to be a little inaccurate for trained athletes who have a shallower decline than 1 bpm/year.
Coffee will raise my exercising HR by about 6bpm to a threshold of about 178 for an hour. My max is 185 which is still within the interval I mentioned.
As already mentioned, predicting individuals is not the same as populations. Need a few more covariates.
Max heart rate according to 220-45 (175), according to that website 178.48.
Over the last ~2.5 years, I've regularly gone above 180bpm, max of 194... I hit 188 and 189 going up two local inclines within ~4mins of each other last night https://www.strava.com/activities/2548946061/analysis/2494/2746
As regards heart rate zones, by default Strava simply uses your max heart rate. https://cricklesorg.wordpress.com/ (free site that you allow to link to your Strava account, someone here mentioned it ~2 years ago IIRC) sets zones differently, based on your best estimated Lactate Threshold Heart Rate over the last 42 days. Very crudely, the LTHR estimate is based on your highest heart rate average over 20mins.
Strava vs Crickles for me...
Z1 <114 vs <133
Z2 114-150 vs 133-144
Z3 151-168 vs 145-152
Z4 169-187 vs 153-162
Z5 188+ vs 163+
Pretty big difference! The Crickles zone4 (threshold) is far more in line with my current best 20mins of power from ~5 weeks ago https://www.strava.com/activities/2452780239/analysis/415/1617
Something I've noticed is my LTHR has gone from ~171 in Jan 2017 to ~175 in Jan 2019, but then since my ~2 month lurgy from early March it dropped quite dramatically to as low as 158 but now 162.
My best guess without seeing your ride data is you felt shattered because your Normalised Power was harder on that ride with your fitter mate and/or you didn't take on easily digestible carbs like Jelly Babies during the ride.
Hi, 42 year old checking in... I regularly see max hr of 201 when I'm really really going for it... so... not sure how I feel about that, but its consistent... 😕
Thanks for all the above folk.
@n0b0dy0ftheg0at I've been over to Crickles, lets see what numbers they give.
Works both ways I guess. 46yrs old and struggle to get higher than 160, some rides I won't even get above 145. Sometimes there might be a spike into the 170's but I put that down to the chest strap.
Been like that for the last ten years. Never bothered to wear strap before that.
Do you usually do rides on consecutive days? If your body isn't used to recovering from back-to-back ride days then it could be as simple as a lack of recovery, particularly given the second ride was with someone fitter and you weren't necessarily refuelling correctly.
As people have said that formula isn’t accurate for lots of people, I’m over 50 and have max of 193 and can ride in excess of 170 for an hour without much worry.
My recorded max is bang on 220-age, but I had read that most amateurs don't have the commitment or pain threshold to truly push to their max, the body almost won't allow it!
Apparently better to base your zones on threshold heart rate, I did a ramp test with a coach but British Cycling has some guidelines on their website.
The archaic and widely discedited Haskell & Fox formula (220-age) or more recent Tanaka's 208 - 0.7 x age are best fit lines to populations. If you look at the raw data they were derived from you'll see how noisy the data is. E.g. I think this was Tanaka's data set:
You can easily be +/- 20 from the best fit line. I was chatting to my PT about this recently and when he was doing his sports science degree one of his fellow students had a max HR of 230 at 20 years old, a bit of an outlier, but just shows how much variation there is.
Looking at the data used in the graph, which is quite a small set, my Max HR could be anywhere from 155 to 200!
I'm 60 and can keep a HR of 175+ for up to ten minutes so I'm well away from the 220 - age. As above, you need to do a threshold test to find your actual MHR.
A variation of 20 bpm from the formula's estimation will really mess up with your HR zones in training.
48 YO, max HR of 200 and I regularly put myself over 180-185. I’ve also taken myself pretty close to bonking on a few occasions recently. I think the harder you push yourself the better you get at reading your body.
You could try British Cycling Threshold Test and their Zone Calculator
I'm 65 so 220-65=155. That's around my threshold HR not max. As footfalls shows there can be huge variance from the standard equation.
I hit 215 a couple of years ago, when I was 40. Regularly hit an average over 180 when running, say 10K at my fastest pace, so 220 minus your age is nonsense.
I remember Mark Allen (multiple Ironman World Champion) saying that the max HR he could achieve actually decreased as he got fitter, so I don't think it really means anything.
JP