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Monday 25 April 2011

Heart Rate Training Zones

Hey this is just going to be a short tutorial on Heart Rate Zones.  Its just so anyone who is also thinking of taking on a bit of weightloss or is just generally exercising for fitness can see the different zones that can be worked in.

Ok so what are the different heart rate zones?



Warm-up/Cool Down Zone — below 50% of your maximum heart rate. This zone is the easiest to achieve, and can usually be hit by walking briskly.  If you stay solely in this zone, you can reap benefits of decreasing body fat, blood pressure, and cholesterol.  85% of the calories burned in this zone are fats!

Fat Burning – 50-65% of your maximum heart rate.  85% of the calories burned in this zone are fats.

Endurance Training – 65-85% of your maximum heart rate.  Your cardiovascular and respiratory system will improve when you exercise within this zone.  It will increase the size and strength of your heart.  50% of the calories burned are from fat.

Anaerobic Zone (Performance Training) – 80-90% of your maximum heart rate.  You will improve your VO2 maximum (the highest amount of oxygen one can consume during exercise) and, consequently, your cardio respiratory system.  You will also get a higher lactate tolerance ability, which means that your endurance will improve and you will be able to fight fatigue.  Olympic athletes typically exercise within this zone. 15% of the calories burned are from fat.

Maximum Effort – 90-100% of your maximum heart rate.  This zone will effectively only be able to be sustained for a very short period of time as your muscles will be working anaerobically 
So folks those are your zones.  You can see that ‘fat burning’ occurs at lower intensity due to the bodies systems but at the end of the day a calorie is a calorie whichever zone you are working in.
Anyway I will leave you with that as food for thought.  If you have any questions you can comment on here or pm me on Facebook or just give me a call if your lucky enough to have my number :-P

Next micro topic I am going to look at will be on Heart Rate recovery.  This is often overlooked but is a good indicator of how fit you are.

Sidenote:  Useful for cyclists link;


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