When South African long-distance cyclist Johnny Goldberg, otherwise known as Johnny G., invented indoor group cycling in the late 1980s, it marked a fundamental shift in group exercise programs around the world. Not only did the concept combine cycling with group exercise to make it the first instructor-led indoor cycling class, it also introduced heart rate training to exercisers of varying fitness levels — a concept that mainly serious athletes had previously used.
Heart Rate Training
The program incorporates heart rate training as a way for participants to immediately and accurately gauge their level of intensity on the bike. It can equally help new exercisers lose weight or improve an athlete's performance. Knowing how hard you’re training from moment to moment — and session to session — gives you better control of your effort, allowing you to more deliberately reach your overall fitness goals. By watching and controlling your heart rate, you can avoid burning out and over-training, and more precisely balance rest with aerobic and anaerobic training for continual fitness advances.
Maximum Heart Rate
When you use a heart rate monitor, the number you see on the watch has no significance if you don’t know your maximum heart rate, or MHR. Beginning exercisers can use the age-predicted method to determine MHR, which states that, for males, 220 minus your age equals your MHR, or 220 - age = MHR. For females, the formula is 226 - age = MHR. Following this formula, a previously sedentary, 30-year-old man would have an MHR of 190.
Energy Zones
The indoor cycling program uses heart rate parameters to define its five energy zones, which include the recovery, endurance, strength, interval and race day zones. A class built around active recovery involves easy riding with minimal resistance while keeping your heart rate between 50 and 65 percent of your MHR. An endurance ride takes place entirely in the saddle, working between 65 and 75 percent of MHR. Strength classes are mainly comprised of hill climbs, in and out of the saddle, that put your heart rate between 75 and 85 percent of MHR. Interval training incorporates bursts of intensity followed by recovery, allowing for the widest heart rate variance at 65 to 92 percent of MHR. Race day is fully anaerobic, holding your heart rate between 80 and 92 percent of MHR.
Fitness and Heart Rate
Using the age-predicted method, a 30-year-old man should keep his heart rate between 123 and 142 during an endurance ride, or 65 and 75 percent of his MHR.
Fitter exercisers should factor their resting heart rate, or RHR, into the equation to derive training percentages that take their fitness level into account. Find your RHR by taking your pulse before you get out of bed in the morning every day for a week. Add the numbers together and divide the result by 7 to calculate your average RHR. Then, calculate each percentage with this equation: [MHR - RHR] x heart rate training percentage + RHR = heart rate training percentage. For example, a fit 30-year-old man with a RHR of 65 who wants to know what 75 percent of his MHR is, would use this formula: 190 - 65 x 0.75 + 65 = 158.
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