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Minimal Agreement About Maximum Heart Rates

April 10, 2008 4:51 am 3 comments

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The New York Times’ Gina Kolata confesses that she suffers from maximum heart rate envy of her husband, even though her husband will not disclose his maximum heart rate.  Geezer confesses that he has always been confused by notions of maximum heart rate and target heart rate (calculated by the Karvonen method or the  Zoladz method?) and wonders if all of that math is worth the effort. Alas, Kolata reports that many others are also math-averse, or just skeptical of the value things like the "notoriously inaccurate" formula for determining your maximum rate: 220 minus your age.  One problem with heart rate monitoring, Olympic marathon coach Kevin Hanson tells the Times, is that it can play mind games with you: if your heart rate is very high, you may worry yourself to a slower pace when a slower pace is not necessarily beneficial. Another problem is that monitoring heart rates can make athletes anxious, and that anxiety will further increase heart rate. So should we monitor, or not? In the end, this piece suggests that it doesn’t really matter, as long as we don’t worry about it. Read more in the New York Times.

3 Comments

  • Wasoon, Trainer
    April 11, 2008
    9:35 am

    FORGET ABOUT the MONITOR! … Unless you have some problem. We are all different and our minimum and maximum rates differ person-to-person and even individually daily! I have 2 monitors and use neither-I wasted my money on them. As a personal trainer I have thought-thru this monitor deal. I use the Borg Scale of Preceived Exertion for myself and my clients. You rate yourself from 1 to 10, expressing the degree of difficulty you are experiencing during your effort. 1 is minimum to no effort, and 10 is killer, balls-to-the-walls output. This works for the normal, basically fit individual. Interval Training then comes into play. Get your heart up to about a 6.5 and then do some 8 to 9 bursts to build your tolerance. End of Story!!

    Reply
  • Codeine.
    June 8, 2009
    7:39 pm

    Codeine.

    Codeine withdrawal. Codeine. What is codeine. 50 mg codeine phosphate equivalent.

    Reply

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