Okay, my trainer has done something I don’t really agree with, and I’d like to run it by some smart people.
My trainer would like me to do my cardio for thirty minutes, and burn three hundred calories. So I did this on Tuesday, burning just over 350 calories in that 30 minutes, and had my heart rate up to between 164 and 174 most of that time. (Treadmill, 3.0 miles an hour at 10 degree incline.)
On Wednesday, he tells me that I worked FAR too hard, and need to work at a heart rate of 121 to 139. (He obtains this number by subtracting my age (34) from 220, then multiplying by 0.65 and 0.75 respectively.)
Just as a baseline check, before my workout yesterday I checked my pulse rate before starting. It was 93.
Then I did my prescribed cardio. It took me damn near an hour. I got my heart rate into the 135-140 range and kept it there, where it took me about 44 minutes to burn 300 calories. It was boring as hell. I felt like I had done nothing. My legs weren’t even sore. It was the single most excruciatingly dull thing I’ve ever done in a gym.
When I ran this by another trainer, he said that I shouldn’t be out of breath when I’m doing my cardio, so a pulse of 170 is way too high for me. But I wasn’t out of breath, I say, and he responds that this is impossible.
So I’m concerned. Is my pulse rate so obscenely high that it doesn’t even seem possible? Every source I’ve seen says it’s just high average. If I’m at a pulse of 170 and not out of breath, is something really seriously fucked up? It seems to me that not being out of breath at 170 would be a good thing.
Your trainer is under the mis-belief that EVERYONE fits into the neat little Karvonen theory of 220 - age X 60-90%. Unfortunatly, out of the billions of people on the planet, not everyone can fit this theory. (Note the term theory)
I recently had a client who could comfortably perform cardio at 200 bpm. She was a 35 year old who, according to Karvonan shouldn’t be able to exceed 185bpm! Her maximum heart rate is in fact around 240bpm.
Your best bet is to establish your aerobic threshold, which is the lowest intensity of CV that will do you much good cardiovascularly speaking, and also establish your anaerobic threshold, which is your highest sustainable intensity level.
To find out your AeT (aerobic threshold) start out on which ever CV machine you like and every minute increase the pace from an easy walk. Once you reach a point where you are mildly out of breath, just beginning to nose breath, feel like on a scale of 1-10 you are working at 5, and can manage to speak in short sentances, you have reached approximatly your AeT.
Your AnT (anaerobic threshold) is 22.5% FASTER than your Aet, So as an example, if your AeT is 7mph, your AnT would be 8.575 (say 8.6) so you would stay between these figures.
Re - test your AeT every 4-6 weeks to allow for improvements in conditioning.
Hope that helps…maybe mention to your trainer it’s supposed to be PERSONAL training and he/she should treat you as an individual, and not one of a few billion!!!
I have a different understanding of the Karvonen theory, myself. The Karvonen equation also includes a third term: your resting heart rate. In essence, the percentage is not of your maximum heart rate, but of the difference between your maximum heart rate and your resting heart rate:
(((220 - age) - RHR) * 40-85%) + RHR
Since I don’t think RHR is normally much more than 20% below a relaxed heart rate (but I just made that up, so it may be completely inaccurate), let’s figure my RHR at about 93 - 19 = 74. That would place my productive heart rate between 118.8 and 169.2, according to Karvonen. If we go up to 90%, we hit 174.8 which is about as high as I was going. So it seems like I was performing in the 80-90% range, which is certainly high, but by no means unhealthy… even according to Karvonen.
My own interpretation has always been, if I feel like I’m working too hard – I probably am. Conversely, if I feel I’m not working hard ENOUGH – I’m probably not. And at the 164-174 range, I was feeling just about the way you describe… breathing heavily, but not out of breath, and certainly able to speak in short sentences. (I didn’t talk to anybody, but I could quite handily take a swig from an open-mouth bottle without difficulty. That’s probably breath control comparable to a short sentence.) It felt like I was really working, but I did sustain the workout for a full half hour, which I REALLY don’t think would happen if I was over my threshold.
It sounds to me like I need to have a talk with my trainer. However, before I stick my foot in it, does anyone know of a legitimate reason the Karvonen equation has been restated to omit the RHR? It seems like a lot of people do it that way, so I’m concerned that I’m missing something.
My understanding is there are two methods - one which takes into account your resting heart rate and a simplified version that doesn’t. Either one is not suited to everyone - hence my post.