Your heart rate plays a large role in the effectiveness of your workouts. Whether you want to improve aerobic endurance, anaerobic endurance or burn fat, you must exercise and recover and in the appropriate heart rate zone to achieve the best results in health and fitness.
Anaerobic and Aerobic Exercise
Anaerobic exercise literally means the body is fueling the activity without oxygen. Anaerobic exercises are shorter in duration and include activities such as weightlifting and sprinting. Aerobic exercise is long-duration exercise -- greater than two minutes -- and requires the presence of oxygen to fuel activities, including walking, jogging and swimming. Although continuous aerobic exercise is thought to improve cardiovascular health and aerobic endurance, interval anaerobic exercise can also improve aerobic endurance.
Interval Training
Interval training is repeated, high-intensity exercise bouts with short rest intervals between bouts. Sprinting or high-intensity strength training is typically used in interval training. The high-intensity bouts can last between 15 seconds and 90 seconds with rest intervals lasting 15 seconds to 120 seconds. Shorter rest periods place more stress on the heart than longer rest periods. Anaerobic work intervals will bring your heart rate to between 80 and 90 percent of its maximum. Extremely high-intensity exercise can elevate your heart rate between 90 and 100 percent of your maximum heart rate. Training with your heart rate between 70 to 80 percent stresses your cardiovascular system and is considered the aerobic zone.
Recovery Intervals
Because oxygen is not used to fuel the activity during anaerobic exercise, the muscles become deprived of oxygen, and lactic acid is produced in the muscles. The oxygen becomes replenished, and the lactate breaks down in the muscles during recovery intervals. The recovery intervals should also bring your heart rate down to between 100 and 110 beats per minute or between 60 to 70 percent of your maximum heart rate.
Calculating Heart Rates
Determine your maximum heart rate and the heart rate zones you should be working at to obtain the best results in your fitness program. Subtract 220 minus your age in years to obtain your maximum heart rate. For example, a 30-year-old's maximum heart rate would be 190 beats per minute. Multiply your maximum heart rate by the heart rate you wish to work in. A 30-year-old wishing to train in the anaerobic zone would multiply 190 by 80 percent and 190 by90 percent to obtain a heart range of 152 to 171 beats per minute. Calculate recovery intervals by multiplying max heart rates by 60 to 70 percent. The 30-year-old recovery interval should be between 114 and 133 beats per minute.
References
- BrianMac Sports Coach: Heart Rate Training Zones
- "Physiology of Sport and Exercise"; Jack H. Wilmore & David L. Costill; 2004
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