Latest / Find Your Edge: Training, Nutrition + Longevity for Endurance Athletes / Heart Rate Training Zones: Train Smarter for Performance & Longevity Ep 128
Transcript
- 0:37Coach Carlie: Hey y'all, and welcome back to the Find Your Edge podcast.
- 0:40Coach Carlie: I am your host, Coach Chris Newport, and today's topic is all about heart rate training.
- 0:47Coach Carlie: I get so many people in our exercise testing facility that ask the same questions and that I tell them the same things over and over and over again.
- 0:58Coach Carlie: And I thought, why don't I make this into a podcast?
- 1:01Coach Carlie: So if you are watching on YouTube, I've got our website open so that I can sort of walk you through some of the different testing options that might be a better fit for you, depending on what you need.
- 1:12Coach Carlie: If you're not near us and you just want to learn about what heart rate training zones are and how to best optimize them, you're in the right place.
- 1:23Coach Carlie: All right, so let me first start off by indicating that there is an equation, 220 minus your age, and then sometimes it's like minus your resting heart rate.
- 1:34Coach Carlie: And there's some other details in that.
- 1:35Coach Carlie: I'll be honest with you, I have not used that equation since I was in school.
- 1:40Coach Carlie: And that was a long time ago.
- 1:42Coach Carlie: And the reason why I don't do that equation is because we don't need it.
- 1:46Coach Carlie: When you actually do laboratory testing, you're getting your actual values instead of having to use population data equations that may or may not work for you.
- 2:00Coach Carlie: So I'll have to thank the gentleman who came in today, and I'm going to give you a couple of case studies or a couple of examples why this seems to be more important so that you can have effective training because who wants to waste their time?
- 2:15Coach Carlie: I mean, you guys got a lot of things going on, right?
- 2:18Coach Carlie: So a lot of things that you want to do with your time, maybe some of them are purely exercising, but why not exercise in the most effective way possible and efficient?
- 2:29Coach Carlie: So I had a gentleman who came into lab today.
- 2:31Coach Carlie: He is in his mid-60s.
- 2:34Coach Carlie: And just as an example, his heart rate max got to 177.
- 2:40Coach Carlie: And using the equation, the 220 minus your age, et cetera, et cetera, his top end, his projected top end of zone two was like 133 or something like that.
- 2:52Coach Carlie: After we did his metabolic testing, it was actually in the mid-140s.
- 2:58Coach Carlie: So we just bought him all that extra space to be able to go a little bit harder while still being super effective at using fat as an energy source, at clearing lactate effectively, and just overall having a more enjoyable experience.
- 3:17Coach Carlie: So typically when people come to the lab, they're doing one of two things.
- 3:22Coach Carlie: They're either working out too hard or they're working out too easy, especially for their zone two training.
- 3:30Coach Carlie: So if you are an endurance athlete, or it doesn't matter who you are, you can be a fitness nut and not have anything to do with trathon or running or cycling or any of that.
- 3:42Coach Carlie: But you just want to do the best exercise and the most effective or efficient exercise for your knees and for your body.
- 3:49Coach Carlie: This is one way to think about it.
- 3:51Coach Carlie: So you may have heard quite a bit of news about yes, zone two training is the bee's knees.
- 3:57Coach Carlie: And I don't disagree.
- 3:59Coach Carlie: What zone two means to us, and let me be clear, we use a five-zone methodology.
- 4:06Coach Carlie: You only have so many different exercise systems.
- 4:10Coach Carlie: So when you take that, you do that first lift, or you go out for the first couple of steps on your run, or you just start pedaling, you have this initial burst of energy from your phosphocreatine system.
- 4:25Coach Carlie: So creatine probably sounds familiar.
- 4:27Coach Carlie: And yes, that's another podcast, but that is that short first one to three seconds of exercise is like, oh, okay.
- 4:35Coach Carlie: It's kind of like the gun going off, if you will.
- 4:37Coach Carlie: Like, all right, I'm gonna give you this quick burst of energy.
- 4:39Coach Carlie: So that's one exercise system.
- 4:42Coach Carlie: Another one is your aerobic energy system.
- 4:46Coach Carlie: Oxidative phosphorylation, it's another way of thinking of it.
- 4:50Coach Carlie: This is where we are using fat effectively.
- 4:53Coach Carlie: Hopefully, we are.
- 4:55Coach Carlie: There's some things that could affect that.
- 4:58Coach Carlie: Hopefully, we're using fat effectively as an energy source because it is in large quantities.
- 5:04Coach Carlie: I don't care whether you're 100 pounds or you're 250 pounds, you have or hopefully should have plenty of quantity of fat to be able to use effectively.
- 5:15Coach Carlie: And it is a very efficient source.
- 5:18Coach Carlie: It provides so much ATP.
- 5:22Coach Carlie: Then, and that's primarily when you are exercising in zone one, zone two.
- 5:29Coach Carlie: So that's when hopefully we should be using fat effectively as an energy source and also clearing lactate efficiently.
- 5:38Coach Carlie: So your quarry cycle should be doing its job.
- 5:42Coach Carlie: Then our lactate starts to rise a little bit and our ability to burn fat goes down.
- 5:48Coach Carlie: That's what we typically like to call zone three.
- 5:50Coach Carlie: We don't say get out of there.
- 5:53Coach Carlie: This is a place where I call it a little bit more of a fun zone, but it also can be what we like to call the mushy middle.
- 6:00Coach Carlie: It's a place where you're not really burning fat effectively, but you're also not really boosting your fitness effectively either.
- 6:09Coach Carlie: But you may need to do it, or it might just be fun.
- 6:13Coach Carlie: You may need to do it, especially if you're doing things like Half Iron Man training or any sort of endurance training.
- 6:19Coach Carlie: Typically, uh, we like to call it like tempo work.
- 6:21Coach Carlie: Everybody's got a different term for everything.
- 6:24Coach Carlie: But that's a nice opportunity to be in that like I'm going hard, but not hard zone, which can be effective for pacing, for nutrition purposes, but doesn't necessarily effectively dip into your aerobic system.
- 6:40Coach Carlie: I mean, you're still aerobic, but you might be a little anaerobic.
- 6:45Coach Carlie: And that other energy system is when we start to use glycogen almost exclusively, or sugar, if you want to sort of simplify it a little bit, almost exclusively.
- 6:57Coach Carlie: And that's when you are likely breathing very hard, your lactate is high, and you're not using fat as an energy source.
- 7:05Coach Carlie: You are exclusively using carbohydrates.
- 7:07Coach Carlie: Again, nothing wrong with this, but this is just how your body works, and an explanation as to why we use a five zone system.
- 7:15Coach Carlie: So, zone one, zone two, high fat use and low lactate.
- 7:21Coach Carlie: So that's a great place to be just for general cardiovascular health and endurance purposes.
- 7:27Coach Carlie: If you are doing any sort of event that is an hour or longer, you gotta be doing that stuff.
- 7:33Coach Carlie: Then we have zone four.
- 7:34Coach Carlie: For what we use, zone four is surrounding your lactate threshold.
- 7:42Coach Carlie: You can also use your ventilatory threshold.
- 7:45Coach Carlie: Those are legitimately different things, but they generally occur within a couple of beats of each other.
- 7:55Coach Carlie: So that is the opportunity or the space where we have a lot of potential to increase our fitness.
- 8:05Coach Carlie: This is where you can do intervals.
- 8:07Coach Carlie: I typically like to see anywhere between three and eight minutes long.
- 8:12Coach Carlie: If you're new to interval training at this particular pace, start small, add in rest intervals of equal time, and then you can gradually work your way up from there.
- 8:24Coach Carlie: That's where we're really building fitness, and that's where we can build what oftentimes cyclists refer to as FTP or your running uh zones as threshold.
- 8:37Coach Carlie: That's where you can basically have a higher adaptation or higher resistance to going hard for longer.
- 8:48Coach Carlie: So hopefully that makes sense.
- 8:50Coach Carlie: And then we have zone five.
- 8:51Coach Carlie: So that's really high, high, high lactate, very hard to sustain.
- 8:55Coach Carlie: And typically that's gonna be anywhere from 20-second intervals, 10-second intervals, 30 seconds, uh, generally speaking, less than a minute.
- 9:05Coach Carlie: This should not be something that you could necessarily sustain for a long time.
- 9:10Coach Carlie: Because again, lactate's gonna be a big contributor because it's so high, it's spilling out into the muscles and giving you sort of that sensation of burning.
- 9:19Coach Carlie: Plus, you are using all glycogen, you're not using any fat as an energy source, and it's generally fatiguing.
- 9:25Coach Carlie: Like, well, you know, you're going to be breathless, and it's just harder to maintain.
- 9:29Coach Carlie: That's okay.
- 9:31Coach Carlie: So, what we generally recommend is 70, 70-ish percent, maybe even 80% of your training is generally in zone two.
- 9:39Coach Carlie: You can play with that.
- 9:40Coach Carlie: This is when it gets super fun.
- 9:42Coach Carlie: And engaging with somebody like a coach, this is what we do, and this is like literally what we get so stoked about is how can we keep an athlete entertained and benefit their fitness and help them to reach some sort of goal and hopefully keep them doing it for a long time to come.
- 10:02Coach Carlie: So, from a longevity aspect.
- 10:04Coach Carlie: All right, so what are the ways that we determine these heart rate training zones?
- 10:12Coach Carlie: I like to use a combination, and if you're watching on YouTube, you can see where our testing opportunities are.
- 10:20Coach Carlie: We've got sweat testing, that is certainly great if you're somebody who is losing a lot of fluid or you're doing anything longer than 90 minutes.
- 10:30Coach Carlie: If you're not doing anything longer than 90 minutes, uh don't bother.
- 10:34Coach Carlie: But, and that's not me trying to be rude, just save your money.
- 10:37Coach Carlie: You don't need it.
- 10:38Coach Carlie: So I'm gonna make our way down to the section that mentions VO2 max testing, and then what we call our performance training zones test, which we combine VO2 max, lactate, and then also body composition.
- 10:52Coach Carlie: And then we just have lactate threshold testing.
- 10:55Coach Carlie: So VO2 max testing, what is that measuring measure and how does that relate to your training zones?
- 11:03Coach Carlie: V or volume, O2 or oxygen, volume of oxygen, and then the term max added on to that is your maximum amount of oxygen that you can use to do work.
- 11:17Coach Carlie: What is more meaningful than just the VO2 max?
- 11:23Coach Carlie: Yes, do we care about VO2 max?
- 11:24Coach Carlie: Sure.
- 11:25Coach Carlie: And is it a marker of longevity?
- 11:27Coach Carlie: Yes.
- 11:28Coach Carlie: But, or maybe I should say, and your volume of oxygen at different ramped stages or at different degrees of efforts is meaningful.
- 11:42Coach Carlie: We also look at your ventilation.
- 11:46Coach Carlie: How much how frequently are you breathing?
- 11:49Coach Carlie: There are two main thresholds, if you will, that we look at with your ventilation.
- 11:55Coach Carlie: So we see this nice steady um warm-up.
- 11:59Coach Carlie: That's typically what how we'll run a protocol is we'll do a nice warm-up for folks.
- 12:03Coach Carlie: That warm-up totally depends on your fitness capacity right now.
- 12:07Coach Carlie: So for some people, it might be uh, let's say if you're on the bike, for some people it might be 50 watts, for some people, it might be uh 70 or 80 watts.
- 12:16Coach Carlie: Basically, we want a super low heart rate.
- 12:18Coach Carlie: We want like almost offensive, like super offensively easy to give you that baseline of ventilation.
- 12:24Coach Carlie: And then as you start to rise, you've got what's called your VT1 or your first ventilatory threshold.
- 12:33Coach Carlie: So that is the inflection point with which now, okay, I am breathing more steadily and more consistently.
- 12:41Coach Carlie: And that VT1 is typically within your zone two.
- 12:47Coach Carlie: We can also see your calorie usage based on your oxygen use.
- 12:50Coach Carlie: So that's a great way to see how how much energy am I actually using based on like what Garmin is telling me or what Whoop is telling me or whatever.
- 12:59Coach Carlie: Then we see VT2.
- 13:00Coach Carlie: We've got this nice steady line, and then we have a second inflection point that's your VT2, and that correlates with your lactate threshold or your FTP if you're gonna um relate it to cycling.
- 13:13Coach Carlie: If you work out around that zone, that is typically what we will dial in as your threshold zone or your zone forward, depending on which zone structure you like to use.
- 13:26Coach Carlie: That's where things get hard.
- 13:29Coach Carlie: And we want to be working at that intensity to increase your resilience at that intensity so that you get faster and you get fitter and stronger.
- 13:41Coach Carlie: The combination of the two, zone two plus zone four intervals, can also impact your overall VO2 max capacity.
- 13:51Coach Carlie: But VO2 max is a harder measure to move, but your fitness level and your resilience at a higher intensity is really that's kind of the magic sauce.
- 14:03Coach Carlie: And that's where programming becomes super important.
- 14:05Coach Carlie: All right, so now with lactate.
- 14:21Coach Carlie: Put on that lovely mask.
- 14:23Coach Carlie: Let me show you a nice picture there.
- 14:25Coach Carlie: If you're watching again, you'll see somebody with a mask on.
- 14:28Coach Carlie: It's not exactly the most becoming thing either.
- 14:30Coach Carlie: And then I'm pricking an athlete's ear, and that's for lactate.
- 14:34Coach Carlie: We use the ear because it's better validated than the finger.
- 14:37Coach Carlie: It's also the athlete can't see it, uh, you barely feel it.
- 14:41Coach Carlie: Anyhow, VOT Max testing plenty if you're just like, you know what, I just want to get fit.
- 14:46Coach Carlie: I want to make sure that I'm training in the right zones and being as efficient and effective as possible.
- 14:51Coach Carlie: I got a busy life, like, I want to make sure that I'm doing everything right.
- 14:55Coach Carlie: There you go.
- 14:55Coach Carlie: If you are someone who is training for something, and this is what we do for all of our incoming athletes, it is part of their training plan, it is rolled into the cost of their training plan and it is shockingly affordable.
- 15:08Coach Carlie: So don't be like, oh my gosh, they must charge an arm and a leg.
- 15:11Coach Carlie: I promise you we don't.
- 15:12Coach Carlie: We are very competitively priced.
- 15:14Coach Carlie: This is not intended to be an ad, but this is how important we find it.
- 15:18Coach Carlie: It drives me bonkers when people are training their little butts off and yet they're not getting anywhere because their heart rate training zones are all off.
- 15:30Coach Carlie: Then think of the downward spiral or the downward cascade of the other things that are affected.
- 15:36Coach Carlie: Like, so we use training peaks, for example.
- 15:39Coach Carlie: Then when you're doing your heart rate zones and your workout comes across in training peaks, training peaks gives you a quote unquote score or training stress score based on how long did you spend in threshold?
- 15:51Coach Carlie: How long did you spend overall?
- 15:53Coach Carlie: And there is a projected stress on your body.
- 15:58Coach Carlie: And if your heart rate zones are not correct, then the stress is not correct either.
- 16:04Coach Carlie: And that also drives me nuts because that's one of our markers to see are you improving?
- 16:09Coach Carlie: So if you are really training for, like you are training for your first Iron Man, you want to get better at Olympic distance races, you want to do your first marathon, you want to get faster at a marathon, you're doing an ultra, like the list is endless of the folks who have come into our lab.
- 16:26Coach Carlie: I highly recommend that you combine the VO2 and the lactate testing.
- 16:30Coach Carlie: And that's our sort of like sweet spot test.
- 16:32Coach Carlie: And it's our most popular test.
- 16:33Coach Carlie: It's the performance training zones test.
- 16:36Coach Carlie: And the reason why I like to add lactate to the VO2 Max testing, it is, in my opinion, a more accurate method of overlaying with your ventilation to more accurately get your training zones.
- 16:51Coach Carlie: VO2 Max is like, you know what, we we got close.
- 16:54Coach Carlie: Lactate is like we're nailing it.
- 16:56Coach Carlie: With lactate, lactic acid, as I'm sure a lot of you have heard of, lactic acid builds up.
- 17:04Coach Carlie: We could call it, for just simplicity's sake, as a byproduct, if you will, of exercise, but we do we we build it up, but then we turn it into lactate and we actually use lactate for energy.
- 17:15Coach Carlie: It's actually an energy source.
- 17:17Coach Carlie: But there becomes a tipping point with which we cannot clear it as quickly anymore.
- 17:24Coach Carlie: So if you come into the lab, and I'm gonna use somebody, I have um, you gotta hear it right here.
- 17:30Coach Carlie: I got a physical piece of paper.
- 17:32Coach Carlie: Look at me.
- 17:33Coach Carlie: Um, this is some of our raw data that we use for an athlete who came in about a month ago with us.
- 17:39Coach Carlie: And this is her second test to see how much she has improved.
- 17:44Coach Carlie: Uh, so I wanted to share some of that information with you because it just goes to show how good quality training can make you a more efficient and a faster athlete.
- 17:54Coach Carlie: So her protocol was starting at four miles per hour.
- 17:58Coach Carlie: She was on the treadmill, four, five, six, seven, eight.
- 18:01Coach Carlie: So going up by one mile per hour increments.
- 18:04Coach Carlie: If you are someone who maybe is not as fit or not as strong, there are walking protocols, especially if you can't run.
- 18:11Coach Carlie: There are so we'll go up in smaller increments.
- 18:14Coach Carlie: So maybe you're somebody who starts at two or three miles per hour, and then you go up in half mile increments.
- 18:21Coach Carlie: Again, depends on age, depends on fitness level.
- 18:24Coach Carlie: But generally speaking, everybody's gonna come in and do some level of a ramp test.
- 18:27Coach Carlie: For her, it was four, five, six, seven, eight, and nine miles per hour on the treadmill for the first couple of stages.
- 18:34Coach Carlie: So I'll give you an example of what her lactate was.
- 18:36Coach Carlie: The first time she came in to see us, her first lactate was 1.0, her second was 0.8, and her third was 0.8.
- 18:45Coach Carlie: Um, I lied.
- 18:46Coach Carlie: That was her second time.
- 18:47Coach Carlie: Um, but very similar to the last, the first time that she came in.
- 18:51Coach Carlie: Also, it's almost like resting levels, 0.6, 0.7, 0.9.
- 18:54Coach Carlie: That's like hardly anything.
- 18:56Coach Carlie: Again, resting levels.
- 18:58Coach Carlie: So you want to see that in the low, that zone one, zone two, you want to see that lactate is incredibly low like that.
- 19:06Coach Carlie: Then we're gonna start ramping up a little bit more.
- 19:10Coach Carlie: So she gets to seven miles per hour, and now her lactate is 1.5, and her heart rate is 156.
- 19:19Coach Carlie: The time that she came in before, her heart rate was 165 for the same effort.
- 19:26Coach Carlie: So, see how just for the given effort level that your heart, because remember, heart rate is a response, it is a physiological response, and it tells you a lot of information about how your training is going.
- 19:39Coach Carlie: So, I find it incredibly important from a training perspective.
- 19:44Coach Carlie: So, not only was her lactate still low, but her heart rate in the first test was 165 at the same pace, and now it's 156.
- 19:54Coach Carlie: That's a vast improvement in efficiency and economy.
- 19:58Coach Carlie: Like she followed the directions.
- 20:00Coach Carlie: Amen to that.
- 20:01Coach Carlie: Love that.
- 20:02Coach Carlie: Here's where it gets super fun.
- 20:05Coach Carlie: At and this is a typical lactate curve.
- 20:08Coach Carlie: So her the first time she came in, her next she went from 1.3 lactate to 3.3 to 6.7.
- 20:17Coach Carlie: The two general inflection points that we're looking for is two millimoles and four millimoles.
- 20:23Coach Carlie: That's generally speaking.
- 20:25Coach Carlie: Not everyone, especially more elite or fitter athletes, follow that.
- 20:32Coach Carlie: They don't follow the rules sometimes, and not because they're intentionally not following the rules, but because they're So stinking good at getting rid of at clearing lactate.
- 20:41Coach Carlie: So then we're looking at what is the jump and is it more than one millimole?
- 20:47Coach Carlie: And that's the meaningful jump that we're looking for in terms of creating zones.
- 20:52Coach Carlie: So for her, we're still we're still leaning pretty heavily into two and four millimoles, but here's the cool part.
- 20:59Coach Carlie: At eight miles per hour, her first time she came in, her heart rate was 176 and her lactate was 3.3.
- 21:10Coach Carlie: So that's getting into like tempo territory.
- 21:12Coach Carlie: And it probably is feeling a little harder.
- 21:15Coach Carlie: And for her, it felt um she indicated on her perception of exertion that it was getting to be somewhat hard.
- 21:23Coach Carlie: So first time she came in, eight miles per hour, 176 for a heart rate and 3.3 for her lactate.
- 21:29Coach Carlie: This time, 165 for a heart rate.
- 21:32Coach Carlie: That's massive.
- 21:34Coach Carlie: And her lactate is now 2.1.
- 21:37Coach Carlie: So she's more efficient at clearing lactate there.
- 21:42Coach Carlie: And her heart rate is lower for the pace that she was going at.
- 21:48Coach Carlie: The next step up was 9 miles per hour.
- 21:52Coach Carlie: Nine miles per hour.
- 21:54Coach Carlie: This time, four millimoles, 178 for a heart rate.
- 21:58Coach Carlie: Last time, 6.7 millimoles of lactate four for a heart rate.
- 22:04Coach Carlie: So again, so much more efficient, so much more effective, clearing lactate better, and just overall fitter, overall faster, right?
- 22:14Coach Carlie: So that is a hopefully a good example to describe what fitness, if you are consistent with it, will do and what that looks like when you test one way or the other.
- 22:27Coach Carlie: So you can, with a field test, test your VO2 max.
- 22:32Coach Carlie: I love the 12-minute Cooper test.
- 22:34Coach Carlie: I can put it in the blog post so that you guys can see what that looks like, how to execute it, do it on your own.
- 22:40Coach Carlie: That's a fantastic one.
- 22:42Coach Carlie: Developed by the Cooper Institute down in Texas and well validated.
- 22:47Coach Carlie: Great test.
- 22:48Coach Carlie: If you want to actually get your training zones, it's harder to field test your zone to because it's like, well, it should be easy.
- 22:58Coach Carlie: And I'm air quoting here, but maybe for some people it's going to feel a little harder or a little bit more uncomfortable.
- 23:07Coach Carlie: You should generally be able to mostly keep your mouth closed and breathe through your nose, but those are all such nebulous methods of trying to determine your zone two.
- 23:17Coach Carlie: If you are really getting serious or really more intentional about doing some sort of an event, then I highly recommend you do the lactate and the BO2 max combination.
- 23:29Coach Carlie: And then we can see, okay, what truly is your cutoff point for zone two?
- 23:33Coach Carlie: And then you get a nice range.
- 23:35Coach Carlie: And then same thing with your zone four or your thresholds, and same thing for zone three.
- 23:40Coach Carlie: Like being in there judiciously doesn't mean it's off limits.
- 23:43Coach Carlie: It's just like, okay, let's have some fun in that zone.
- 23:47Coach Carlie: So, one other thing that I want to mention about heart rate training zones, and this is super important because I get uh this trips people up all the time.
- 23:58Coach Carlie: Your heart rate training zones will vary by sport.
- 24:05Coach Carlie: Let me say that again, especially if you have me on 2x speed, because this is so important.
- 24:11Coach Carlie: Your heart rate training zones will vary by sport.
- 24:18Coach Carlie: So, for all you triathlete out there, your running zones will be somewhere between 8 to 12 beats higher than your cycling zones.
- 24:29Coach Carlie: So if somebody comes into our lab and they're like, I don't want to do the performance training on both the bike and the run, then okay, choose one, and then you can make a pretty good estimation for the other.
- 24:42Coach Carlie: So if you do your run zones, drop them all by roughly 10 beats, and then you'll get your cycling zones.
- 24:50Coach Carlie: Or vice versa.
- 24:52Coach Carlie: So if you're somebody who's into general fitness, I try to lean into the method that you or the mode of exercise that you're going to be using the most to create those training zones.
- 25:04Coach Carlie: So if you love your Peloton, do a bike test.
- 25:08Coach Carlie: If you love walking, do a walking protocol and get your uh zones for that.
- 25:15Coach Carlie: If you love running, do your running zone test.
- 25:19Coach Carlie: We also have a rower and we're also mobile.
- 25:22Coach Carlie: We actually can go and um, you know, go to gyms and things like that.
- 25:26Coach Carlie: But typically the most effective way to find zones is gonna be some sort of cardiovascular exercise.
- 25:34Coach Carlie: So rowing, cycling.
- 25:35Coach Carlie: Uh, swimming, it's possible to do, it's a little trickier.
- 25:39Coach Carlie: Uh, but again, from cycling, your swimming zones, if you're using heart rate for swimming, are gonna be again another 8 to 12 beats, even lower than cycling.
- 25:51Coach Carlie: The reason for that, and if you think about good old gravity, is when you are so for running, for example, if your your body is upright and your heart has to pump blood all the way down to your legs against gravity, it's got to push it all the way back up.
- 26:11Coach Carlie: So your heart has to work that much harder to get the blood back up to your heart.
- 26:17Coach Carlie: And then with cycling, you are not having the same degree of pounding.
- 26:21Coach Carlie: So you're not working against gravity quite as much.
- 26:24Coach Carlie: So that's gonna be shifted down even further.
- 26:27Coach Carlie: So that's why I like things like we help people put their training zones into Garmin.
- 26:31Coach Carlie: It is not super intuitive, doesn't mean you can't figure it out, um, you know, or or Google how to do it because each watch, of course, is just a little like nuanced and a little bit different in terms of the can you put them in by percentage of max, percentage of lactate threshold, beats per minute.
- 26:46Coach Carlie: So that's what we help people do in the in the lab too.
- 26:49Coach Carlie: Regardless, lean into whatever, you know, quote unquote default heart rate, whatever method out method, whatever mode of exercise you're using the most, and use those training zones.
- 26:59Coach Carlie: And then just know if you are trying to get your heart rate up to a certain point, let's say you're on the Peloton and we have your training zones on the run, you're not gonna be able to get your heart rate up as high.
- 27:11Coach Carlie: Or vice versa, you're you're gonna be working way too hard or way too easy, depending on what the situation is.
- 27:17Coach Carlie: So we want you to get the most effective workout possible and have the most fun because at the end of the day, longevity in sport and in life is all about being consistent and doing whatever exercise it is for you that brings you joy and keeps you going.
- 27:39Coach Carlie: So to sum it all up, heart rate training zones, the most effective way to dial them in truly is laboratory testing, but you certainly can do some field testing to get close to what your overall VO2 max is.
- 27:55Coach Carlie: And just generally thinking, okay, so for zone two, I'm looking for a general, easy pace.
- 28:02Coach Carlie: If you are training for something, I highly recommend that you get these dialed in.
- 28:06Coach Carlie: It just makes your training that much more effective and efficient.
- 28:08Coach Carlie: We do this as part of our um coaching programs, which you can check out at the enduranceedge.com forward slash triathlon coaching, even though we also coach runners and cyclists.
- 28:17Coach Carlie: And finally, the overall picture is that we want you to be working out as effectively and efficiently as possible to not only support your heart and your lungs by doing that good zone two training using fat effectively as an energy source.
- 28:31Coach Carlie: It's really great for weight loss tools as well.
- 28:34Coach Carlie: I know a lot of folks come to us and they're just looking to weight loss to do weight loss, and they're doing things like high-intensity interval or like boot camp style classes, and they're always working out either not easy enough or way too hard.
- 28:47Coach Carlie: So, this gives you an opportunity by using heart rate training zones to work out more effectively for your body and for your metabolism.
- 28:57Coach Carlie: And then if you're somebody who's training for something, this is like gold.
- 29:02Coach Carlie: This makes everything way more efficient, way more effective.
- 29:06Coach Carlie: And who doesn't want to get faster?
- 29:10Coach Carlie: Just like that case that I told you about.
- 29:13Coach Carlie: We see it all the time.
- 29:15Coach Carlie: And uh, let me let me make sure that I mention frequency of testing.
- 29:20Coach Carlie: If you're somebody who has access to testing, like some of our VIP clients, great.
- 29:24Coach Carlie: It's nice to do it every maybe six to eight weeks.
- 29:27Coach Carlie: You can get into the lab and see how you've improved.
- 29:31Coach Carlie: But what the case study that I was giving you was about a year difference, but we'll typically see improvements anywhere from like four to six months of these vast improvements of lactate clearance.
- 29:44Coach Carlie: So typically just to test lactate, that's easier.
- 29:49Coach Carlie: But if you want to do the whole shebang with a VO2 max and everything to see if you are more economical too from an oxygen perspective.
- 29:57Coach Carlie: So, anyway, hopefully that helped to give you a little bit more information or hopefully a lot more information about what heart rate training zones are and how they can benefit your performance, your fitness, and your longevity.
- 30:11Coach Carlie: If questions are coming up for you, this is literally why I'm here, and this is literally why I'm doing this podcast.
- 30:18Coach Carlie: I want to know what questions you have.
- 30:21Coach Carlie: I gave, I did this podcast because these are the common questions that I get for folks coming in the lab, but I know you've got a burn-in question.
- 30:28Coach Carlie: You're like, well, what about this?
- 30:29Coach Carlie: Or what about that?
- 30:31Coach Carlie: Tell me, put it in the comments, depending on whatever platform, shoot us a DM over on Instagram at the endurance edge.
- 30:39Coach Carlie: You can find us on our website, theendurance edge.com, go to the contact us page, send us some messages there.
- 30:45Coach Carlie: I want to hear your questions.
- 30:47Coach Carlie: And maybe if somebody gives us a question, maybe I'll throw out a uh a gift card to some metabolic testing.
- 30:54Coach Carlie: But tell me what you got.
- 30:56Coach Carlie: I can't wait to hear it.
- 30:57Coach Carlie: Thank you so much for listening.
- 30:58Coach Carlie: You guys are awesome.
- 30:59Coach Carlie: You are fantastic.
- 31:01Coach Carlie: I'm so grateful for you, and I will catch you next time.
- 31:03Coach Carlie: Thanks.