Help me clarify: The better your fitness, the harder it is to get a high HR?

jojoma

I just heard two completely different opinions on this. I thought that the better your physical condition, the more difficult it is to get to a high heart rate. Is this true, or is it the other way around?

Thanks

Alex Simmons

Neither, you just need to go faster and/or further when fit to lift your HR - that doesn't mean it's harder or easier However it is true that you'll tend to have a higher HR when unfit simply because keeping up is hard work but when you're fit it's everone else that's keeping up

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Spunout

Perhaps.

You might also consider that high cumulative training load results in an inability to reach high HR. After a few weeks of rest, HR may be higher.

The high load & low HR observation is sort of a false result of being well trained vs. training hard.

janiejones

the fitter I seem to get the lower my resting pulse gets - so I figured that I have further to go now to raise my HR to its maximum.

for example, back when I was studying hard, drinking coffee all day, smoking a bit and doing very little exercise my resting pulse used to be 80 - so to get to a maximum hr, of say 180, I had a gap of 100.

But now all that other stuff is gone and I'm on my bike everyday, my resting pulse is 58, so to get it to a maximum of 180, there is a gap of 122

Am I right here, or way off?

Animator

From what I've read, a lower resting heart rate is a "byproduct" of endurance training and does not contribute to performance at all.

BullGod

My resting is 46 bpm and I have just ridden a season in Cat 1 and sometimes in elite, and even during near blackout / almost throwing up efforts in the most brutal criteriums I have never gotten my max HR over 180....

I ride a 80km club RR every saturday and my avge for that is below 125, usually around 100....

I sort of wish I could get it higher - quite a few guys I know can get to 200.

Simone@Italy

What would be the advantage with an higher HRmax?

Dietmar

Excellent question. Answer: There is no reason to care one wit about maximum heart rate. For starters, maximum heart rate is essentially impervious to training, at least in the short term, and depends almost exclusively on genetics. What does respond to training is stroke volume, which can be increased significantly. Ultimately what counts is the pumping capacity of your heart, which is heart rate times stroke volume. You increase the performance of your heart by increasing stroke volume, not heart rate. My guess is that, as a weak second-order effect, maximum heart rate might even slightly decrease if the size of your heart increases.

kclw

Hearts are wierd. My resting HR is 40 bpm I have race cat 3 and expert MTB (nothing special). I regularly get my HR to 200. I still carry on a converstation at 165.

doctorSpoc

yep... it's pretty much a useless statistic... resting HR is useful though... i know i'm coming into form when my resting HR gets to or below 50 bpm... as well an elevated resting HR can indicate that you are about to get sick.. but maxHR... if you hit maxHR in a race and you have more than 50 metres to go.. you know you are in BIG trouble!!

Yojimbo_

Who gives a crap about your heart rates? Why not answer the original posters question instead?

Clearly, for the same power output, your heart rate will be lower if you are fit compared to what it would be if you are unfit.

(By the way, my resting HR is currently 38 (used to be lower), and I'm 52. I still get dropped on rides).

doctorSpoc

huh?? that is not what the OP asked... he asked...

"I just heard two completely different opinions on this. I thought that the better your physical condition, the more difficult it is to get to a high heart rate. Is this true, or is it the other way around?"

this is not true... the better your physical condition the easier it is for you to get your HR to go up and down... you are just doing more work at a given HR.

yes, probably, under the exact same conditions (same rest, same point in macro and micro cycle, same time of day, same time you last ate, same amout of caffine in your system... etc, etc, etc) your HR for a given power will likely be on average lower for if you are more fit... but HR is so variable for so many reasons (see the above non-exhaustive list of things that can make it vary) that it's pretty useless to be using it as a guide to fitness... taking as little as two days off the bike can reduce your stroke volume and you will be no less fit but your HR for a given power and RPE will be higher... one or two days and your heart addapts and stroke volume and HR returns to what it was before... i'll say it again HR is a useless method of measuring fitness and intensity to train...

the other posters were giving the OP practical advice that the more fit you are the more the likelyhood that you are doing greater volume and the greater volume would tend to reduce your ability to do higher intensity workouts that would tend to raise you HR towards its max... and might make it seem that if you are more fit the harder it is to raise you HR but it's not true... the real reason is the higher volume of workouts you tend to do and if you did some day of recovery you'd see that your HR would actually go up and down faster than when you are less fit

your relative resting HR is a more reliable measure of your fitness... but again under conditions that are as similar as possible... e.g. if you take you resting HR after a rest day, same day of the week, same time in cycle etc... before you go to sleep or right after you wake up

bottom line is if you are really interested in measuring fitness and guaging your workout intensity buy a power meter...

GinaNY

In your case, you've obviously increased your aerobic/anerobic threshhold. That is what the Kenyans do so that they can run at high speed for extended periods.

That is something I'm always watching because I'm trying to maximize weight loss. You need to have oxygen to burn fat, so I don't push past conversation level heart rate. But 80 pounds ago, I couldn't carry on a conversation above HR of 130. Now I'm fine until 150.

It was easy for me to get my heart rate up high when I was hugely overweight and out of shape and yes, it takes more effort now to get it up to the same level, but I think the whole point is to know WHY you want it up there. Are you trying to improve cardio function? Lose weight? It only really matters if you're going to use the info. for something. As a random number, I agree, it means nothing.

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jojoma

But doesn't a change in the HR you can achieve effect the zones you need to work in? In other words, if someone is using the formula (220-age) and setting their zones accordingly, this will change when max heart rate changes due to increased fitness. Correct? For example, a year ago I could get to the mid 180s on a fairly steep and long climb, but just a couple days ago I could barely hit 175 and I was completely destroying myself.

So I guess what I am saying is that there might need to be another way to determine HR zones, such as using your resting HR and working up as opposed to max HR and working down.