Topic: The 220-age for HRmax is not for everyone
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Gary
AR
Member Since:
04/13/2006 Total Posts: 713
2.5 Years Ago
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I am 53 and totally out of shape. Well, I was April 11 when I started training. I purchased a Polar F11 and have been HR monitoring with each workout. Yesterday was one of my days for maxing the heart. According to my age my HRmax should be 167. Yesterday during a mile run I hit 170. I should be dead I guess. I had already determined my HRmax was greater than 167 and had used another formula to move it to 178. The 170 was 96% of that. As I get into better anaerobic shape I am going to do a series of hill runs to get a more accurate HRmax. Right now I am using 178 and that seems pretty close. |
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Re: The 220-age for HRmax is not for everyone
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Gary
MA
Member Since:
09/03/2006 Total Posts: 12
1.9 Years Ago
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Gary:
Just saw your note and even though it's way old I wanted to respond and support your observation that the 220-age is not necesarily the way to go in establishing aerobic HR training levels. I'm 58 and did a max HR test and got up to 177. Based on this I set my aerobic target zone at 140-150 (80-85% max HR). In this range I find I can run at around 6.5 mph. Using the 220-age rule, I'd be targetting a HR around 130 which would limit me to around 5 mph - too low to be any fun.
I also did some research and found that there are other more detailed ways of establishing target zone based on a combination of age, physical condition, health and other factors. I belive there is a link much earlier in this thread to a web article outlining the procedure.
If others have ideas on this, I'd be interested to hear them.
Gary |
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Re: The 220-age for HRmax is not for everyone
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Gary
AR
Member Since:
04/13/2006 Total Posts: 713
1.9 Years Ago
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Hi Gary,
Since I posted that I have found my HRmax to be close to 178-180. I have run hills and have set a HR mark at 175. I also ran a 5K race back in July and hit 174 3/4 through the race so I know the 220-age is inaccurate for me at least. Using that I should be at 167. I wish I could hit 6.5mph. I need to drop 25 pounds to do that. In the old days I could train at 7:30 min/mile without breaking a sweat. 40 pounds later and several years it is a different story, but I am getting there. |
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