Use heart rate fitness training to keep your heart rate in a range that will help you best meet your goal. If you want to burn body fat stores, improve how long you can do aerobic exercise or improve how fast you can do an aerobic activity, you need to keep your heart rate within a specific range or zone.
Fat Burning
Heart rate training is used to improve the utilization or the burn of stored body fat. Use your stored fat by exercising for 45 to 60 minutes five days a week. Your intensity must be low enough to exercise for a long duration. Working at 55 to 70 percent of your maximum heart rate enables you to exercise for an extended period of time. Subtract your age from 220 to find the maximum amount of times your heart will beat in one minute. If you are 30 years old, 220 minus 30 gives you 190 beats. The lowest number of beats to keep you in a "fat burning" zone is 190 multiplied by 0.55, giving you 105 beats. The highest number of beats to keep you in the zone is 190 multiplied by 0.70, giving you 133 beats. Your "fat burning" zone, then, is between 105 and 133 beats per minute.
Aerobic Capacity
Heart rate training can also be used to improve your aerobic fitness. Exercising at a higher percentage of your maximum heart rate will help you run faster for a given distance. When you run at 85 percent of your maximum heart rate, you stimulate your body to make more aerobic enzymes and capillaries. The more aerobic enzymes you have, the faster your body can break down the glucose (carbohydrates) in your blood to give you more energy for your training. The more capillaries you have, the faster and the greater amount of oxygen that gets into your muscle cells to give you even more energy.
VO2 Max
You can use heart rate training to improve your VO2 max, or the maximum amount of oxygen your cells can use at any given moment. Training at higher percentages of maximum heart rate correlates to training at a given percentage of VO2 max: 80 percent HR max equals 70 percent VO2 max; 90 percent HR max equals 83 percent VO2 max; and 100 percent HR max equals 100 percent VO2 max. This high intensity of heart rate training induces physiologic adaptations, which enable you to run (work) harder and faster for a longer period of time.
Lactate Threshold Training
Lactic acid is the waste product of cells when you exercise really hard and really fast for up to three minutes. Lactate threshold training is directly related to very high heart rates in aerobic exercise resulting from your "all-out" effort. When you exercise using your "all-out" effort, lactic acid accumulates quickly and you perceive you are working hard, very hard or very, very hard. Training a lot at the " very, very hard" level means your are training within a very fast heart rate range and training at your lactate threshold point -- the point at which your muscles can barely contract or exercise.
Though lactate threshold must be directly measured in a lab, you can feel the point at which your muscles are unable to contract. You can only run an all-out sprint for 20 seconds or bike up a steep hill for 15 seconds. Exercise at your lactate threshold point to improve your fitness, and to be able to work harder and faster by keeping your heart near 92 percent of your maximum heart rate.
Misconceptions
Many people believe exercising in the "fat burning zone" (55 to 70 percent of maximum heart rate) will help them lose fat more effectively than exercising at higher intensities. This is not true. You will lose 1 lb. of body fat when you burn 3,500 calories. Including exercises at higher intensities will ultimately burn more calories than always training in the "fat burning zone" for an hour a day, five days a week. The most effective plan of action for aerobic exercise as a method to lose body fat is to vary your workouts with moderate-, high- and very high-intensity exercises.
References
- "Exercise Physiology, Energy, Nutrition & Human Performance"; William D. McArdle, Frank I. Katch and Victor L. Katch; 2007
- "Personal Trainer Manual"; American Council on Exercise; 1997
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