Heart Rate Training Zones: Train Smarter for Performance & Longevity Ep 128

Are you training too hard—or not hard enough? In this episode of the Find Your Edge podcast, Coach Chris Newport breaks down heart rate training zones, why common formulas like “220 minus age” miss the mark, and how VO₂ max and lactate testing can dramatically improve your performance, fat burning, and longevity.

You’ll learn:

• Why Zone 2 training is so powerful
• How VO₂ max and ventilatory thresholds work
• What lactate testing actually tells us
• Why heart rate zones change by sport
• How proper testing saves time and boosts results

Whether you’re an endurance athlete or simply want to train smarter, this episode will help you unlock more effective and enjoyable workouts.

Book your metabolic testing here: https://www.theenduranceedge.com/sweat-metabolic-vo2-testing/ 

Read the blog here: https://www.theenduranceedge.com/heart-rate-training-zones/

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Transcript

Why Heart Rate Formulas Fall Short

Coach Carlie 1:00

Hey y'all, and welcome back to the Find Your Edge podcast. I am your host, Coach Chris Newport, and today's topic is all about heart rate training. 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. And I thought, why don't I make this into a podcast? 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. 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. 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. And there's some other details in that. I'll be honest with you, I have not used that equation since I was in school. And that was a long time ago. And the reason why I don't do that equation is because we don't need it. 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. 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? I mean, you guys got a lot of things going on, right? 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? So I had a gentleman who came into lab today. He is in his mid-60s. And just as an example, his heart rate max got to 177. 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. After we did his metabolic testing, it was actually in the mid-140s. 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. So typically when people come to the lab, they're doing one of two things. They're either working out too hard or they're working out too easy, especially for their zone two training. 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. But you just want to do the best exercise and the most effective or efficient exercise for your knees and for your body. This is one way to think about it. So you may have heard quite a bit of news about yes, zone two training is the bee's knees. And I don't disagree. What zone two means to us, and let me be clear, we use a five-zone methodology. You only have so many different exercise systems. 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. So creatine probably sounds familiar. And yes, that's another podcast, but that is that short first one to three seconds of exercise is like, oh, okay. It's kind of like the gun going off, if you will. Like, all right, I'm gonna give you this quick burst of energy. So that's one exercise system. Another one is your aerobic energy system. Oxidative phosphorylation, it's another way of thinking of it. This is where we are using fat effectively. Hopefully, we are. There's some things that could affect that. Hopefully, we're using fat effectively as an energy source because it is in large quantities. 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. And it is a very efficient source. It provides so much ATP. Then, and that's primarily when you are exercising in zone one, zone two. So that's when hopefully we should be using fat effectively as an energy source and also clearing lactate efficiently. So your quarry cycle should be doing its job. Then our lactate starts to rise a little bit and our ability to burn fat goes down. That's what we typically like to call zone three. We don't say get out of there. 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. It's a place where you're not really burning fat effectively, but you're also not really boosting your fitness effectively either. But you may need to do it, or it might just be fun. You may need to do it, especially if you're doing things like Half Iron Man training or any sort of endurance training. Typically, uh, we like to call it like tempo work. Everybody's got a different term for everything. 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. I mean, you're still aerobic, but you might be a little anaerobic. 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. And that's when you are likely breathing very hard, your lactate is high, and you're not using fat as an energy source. You are exclusively using carbohydrates. 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. So, zone one, zone two, high fat use and low lactate. So that's a great place to be just for general cardiovascular health and endurance purposes. If you are doing any sort of event that is an hour or longer, you gotta be doing that stuff. Then we have zone four. For what we use, zone four is surrounding your lactate threshold. You can also use your ventilatory threshold. Those are legitimately different things, but they generally occur within a couple of beats of each other. So that is the opportunity or the space where we have a lot of potential to increase our fitness. This is where you can do intervals. I typically like to see anywhere between three and eight minutes long. 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. 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. That's where you can basically have a higher adaptation or higher resistance to going hard for longer. So hopefully that makes sense. And then we have zone five. So that's really high, high, high lactate, very hard to sustain. And typically that's gonna be anywhere from 20-second intervals, 10-second intervals, 30 seconds, uh, generally speaking, less than a minute. This should not be something that you could necessarily sustain for a long time. 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. Plus, you are using all glycogen, you're not using any fat as an energy source, and it's generally fatiguing. Like, well, you know, you're going to be breathless, and it's just harder to maintain. That's okay. So, what we generally recommend is 70, 70-ish percent, maybe even 80% of your training is generally in zone two. You can play with that. This is when it gets super fun. 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. So, from a longevity aspect. All right, so what are the ways that we determine these heart rate training zones? I like to use a combination, and if you're watching on YouTube, you can see where our testing opportunities are. 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. If you're not doing anything longer than 90 minutes, uh don't bother. But, and that's not me trying to be rude, just save your money. You don't need it. 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. And then we just have lactate threshold testing. So VO2 max testing, what is that measuring measure and how does that relate to your training zones? 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. What is more meaningful than just the VO2 max? Yes, do we care about VO2 max? Sure. And is it a marker of longevity? Yes. But, or maybe I should say, and your volume of oxygen at different ramped stages or at different degrees of efforts is meaningful. We also look at your ventilation. How much how frequently are you breathing? There are two main thresholds, if you will, that we look at with your ventilation. So we see this nice steady um warm-up. That's typically what how we'll run a protocol is we'll do a nice warm-up for folks. That warm-up totally depends on your fitness capacity right now. 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. Basically, we want a super low heart rate. We want like almost offensive, like super offensively easy to give you that baseline of ventilation. And then as you start to rise, you've got what's called your VT1 or your first ventilatory threshold. So that is the inflection point with which now, okay, I am breathing more steadily and more consistently. And that VT1 is typically within your zone two. We can also see your calorie usage based on your oxygen use. 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. Then we see VT2. 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. 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. That's where things get hard. 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. The combination of the two, zone two plus zone four intervals, can also impact your overall VO2 max capacity. 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. And that's where programming becomes super important. All right, so now with lactate. Put on that lovely mask. Let me show you a nice picture there. If you're watching again, you'll see somebody with a mask on. It's not exactly the most becoming thing either. And then I'm pricking an athlete's ear, and that's for lactate. We use the ear because it's better validated than the finger. It's also the athlete can't see it, uh, you barely feel it. Anyhow, VOT Max testing plenty if you're just like, you know what, I just want to get fit. I want to make sure that I'm training in the right zones and being as efficient and effective as possible. I got a busy life, like, I want to make sure that I'm doing everything right. There you go. 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. So don't be like, oh my gosh, they must charge an arm and a leg. I promise you we don't. We are very competitively priced. This is not intended to be an ad, but this is how important we find it. 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. Then think of the downward spiral or the downward cascade of the other things that are affected. Like, so we use training peaks, for example. 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? How long did you spend overall? And there is a projected stress on your body. And if your heart rate zones are not correct, then the stress is not correct either. And that also drives me nuts because that's one of our markers to see are you improving? 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. I highly recommend that you combine the VO2 and the lactate testing. And that's our sort of like sweet spot test. And it's our most popular test. It's the performance training zones test. 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. VO2 Max is like, you know what, we we got close. Lactate is like we're nailing it. With lactate, lactic acid, as I'm sure a lot of you have heard of, lactic acid builds up. 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. It's actually an energy source. But there becomes a tipping point with which we cannot clear it as quickly anymore. So if you come into the lab, and I'm gonna use somebody, I have um, you gotta hear it right here. I got a physical piece of paper. Look at me. Um, this is some of our raw data that we use for an athlete who came in about a month ago with us. And this is her second test to see how much she has improved. 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. So her protocol was starting at four miles per hour. She was on the treadmill, four, five, six, seven, eight. So going up by one mile per hour increments. If you are someone who maybe is not as fit or not as strong, there are walking protocols, especially if you can't run. There are so we'll go up in smaller increments. So maybe you're somebody who starts at two or three miles per hour, and then you go up in half mile increments. Again, depends on age, depends on fitness level. But generally speaking, everybody's gonna come in and do some level of a ramp test. For her, it was four, five, six, seven, eight, and nine miles per hour on the treadmill for the first couple of stages. So I'll give you an example of what her lactate was. 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. Um, I lied. That was her second time. Um, but very similar to the last, the first time that she came in. Also, it's almost like resting levels, 0.6, 0.7, 0.9. That's like hardly anything. Again, resting levels. 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. Then we're gonna start ramping up a little bit more. So she gets to seven miles per hour, and now her lactate is 1.5, and her heart rate is 156. The time that she came in before, her heart rate was 165 for the same effort. 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. So, I find it incredibly important from a training perspective. 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. That's a vast improvement in efficiency and economy. Like she followed the directions. Amen to that. Love that. Here's where it gets super fun. At and this is a typical lactate curve. So her the first time she came in, her next she went from 1.3 lactate to 3.3 to 6.7. The two general inflection points that we're looking for is two millimoles and four millimoles. That's generally speaking. Not everyone, especially more elite or fitter athletes, follow that. 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. So then we're looking at what is the jump and is it more than one millimole? And that's the meaningful jump that we're looking for in terms of creating zones. So for her, we're still we're still leaning pretty heavily into two and four millimoles, but here's the cool part. At eight miles per hour, her first time she came in, her heart rate was 176 and her lactate was 3.3. So that's getting into like tempo territory. And it probably is feeling a little harder. And for her, it felt um she indicated on her perception of exertion that it was getting to be somewhat hard. So first time she came in, eight miles per hour, 176 for a heart rate and 3.3 for her lactate. This time, 165 for a heart rate. That's massive. And her lactate is now 2.1. So she's more efficient at clearing lactate there. And her heart rate is lower for the pace that she was going at. The next step up was 9 miles per hour. Nine miles per hour. This time, four millimoles, 178 for a heart rate. Last time, 6.7 millimoles of lactate four for a heart rate. So again, so much more efficient, so much more effective, clearing lactate better, and just overall fitter, overall faster, right? 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. So you can, with a field test, test your VO2 max. I love the 12-minute Cooper test. 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. That's a fantastic one. Developed by the Cooper Institute down in Texas and well validated. Great test. 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. 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. 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. 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. And then we can see, okay, what truly is your cutoff point for zone two? And then you get a nice range. And then same thing with your zone four or your thresholds, and same thing for zone three. Like being in there judiciously doesn't mean it's off limits. It's just like, okay, let's have some fun in that zone. 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. Your heart rate training zones will vary by sport. Let me say that again, especially if you have me on 2x speed, because this is so important. Your heart rate training zones will vary by sport. So, for all you triathlete out there, your running zones will be somewhere between 8 to 12 beats higher than your cycling zones. 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. So if you do your run zones, drop them all by roughly 10 beats, and then you'll get your cycling zones. Or vice versa. 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. So if you love your Peloton, do a bike test. If you love walking, do a walking protocol and get your uh zones for that. If you love running, do your running zone test. We also have a rower and we're also mobile. We actually can go and um, you know, go to gyms and things like that. But typically the most effective way to find zones is gonna be some sort of cardiovascular exercise. So rowing, cycling. Uh, swimming, it's possible to do, it's a little trickier. 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. 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. So your heart has to work that much harder to get the blood back up to your heart. And then with cycling, you are not having the same degree of pounding. So you're not working against gravity quite as much. So that's gonna be shifted down even further. So that's why I like things like we help people put their training zones into Garmin. 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. So that's what we help people do in the in the lab too. 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. 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. Or vice versa, you're you're gonna be working way too hard or way too easy, depending on what the situation is. 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. 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. And just generally thinking, okay, so for zone two, I'm looking for a general, easy pace. If you are training for something, I highly recommend that you get these dialed in. It just makes your training that much more effective and efficient. 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. 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. It's really great for weight loss tools as well. 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. So, this gives you an opportunity by using heart rate training zones to work out more effectively for your body and for your metabolism. And then if you're somebody who's training for something, this is like gold. This makes everything way more efficient, way more effective. And who doesn't want to get faster? Just like that case that I told you about. We see it all the time. And uh, let me let me make sure that I mention frequency of testing. If you're somebody who has access to testing, like some of our VIP clients, great. It's nice to do it every maybe six to eight weeks. You can get into the lab and see how you've improved. 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. So typically just to test lactate, that's easier. 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. 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. If questions are coming up for you, this is literally why I'm here, and this is literally why I'm doing this podcast. I want to know what questions you have. 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. You're like, well, what about this? Or what about that? Tell me, put it in the comments, depending on whatever platform, shoot us a DM over on Instagram at the endurance edge. You can find us on our website, theendurance edge.com, go to the contact us page, send us some messages there. I want to hear your questions. And maybe if somebody gives us a question, maybe I'll throw out a uh a gift card to some metabolic testing. But tell me what you got. I can't wait to hear it. Thank you so much for listening. You guys are awesome. You are fantastic. I'm so grateful for you, and I will catch you next time. Thanks.