Related
This discussion has been locked.
You can no longer post new replies to this discussion. If you have a question you can start a new discussion

Measured Max Heart Rate vs Calculated

Jvanfleet74
over 1 year ago

Hi all,

I recently ran a 10k race using a Polar H9 heart rate monitor linked to my Garmin Vivoactive 3 watch.  Upon reviewing the data collected I determined that I recorded a sustained max heart rate in excess of the Garmin calculated max heart rate.  I am trying to determine if I should update my max heart rate based on the recorded max heat rate.

For reference I am a 48 year old male.  Based on the max heart rate calculation of 220 minus your age, my max heart rate used to establish my training zones was 172.

Below is a screen shot from my race.  As you can see, beginning at km 7, I recorded a sustained max heart rate above 172, culminating in a max recorded heart rate of 183 as I pushed all out to the finish of the race.  

Does the data below justify increasing my max rate rate used in calculating my heart rate training zones?  if so, what would the suggested value be?

Thanks in advance for your feedback.

  

  • 0 over 1 year ago

    Hi, yes I believe you should use your actual recorded values for max heart rate. Actually if you have "auto detect max HR" enabled on your device, then it should have already updated it for your based on your data. (Note I personally prefer turning auto detect off, because if it detects an erroneous value for some reason, it can really mess up my zones and I have to manually fix them. I set my max HR manually.)

    That infamous "220 minus age" formula *cough* really has little/no scientific basis. There are actually research papers out there that tried to find its origin (appears to have been almost 100 yrs ago in 1930s!), and they generally agree that it was sketchy to begin with and has a very wide margin of error. Unfortunately it seems to have polluted almost every piece of fitness info out there.

    My understanding is there is still no simple formula that can estimate someone's max HR with acceptable accuracy. The best value to use still appears to be the max HR from our own data from maximal effort activities. I think your 10K effort with hard finish would be great to use for your max HR.

    Personally, I don't like using max HR to set my zones however. After learning about the options I switched to using lactate threshold instead (%LTHR). The reason is fairly simple: max HR is generally "untrainable", meaning it doesn't really change (other than slowly with age), whereas lactate threshold is highly trainable, and can change significantly with training history. Therefore zones that are based on max HR will never adapt to reflect our fitness level, they will always be the same static values. Zones based on %LTHR however will change with our fitness level, ensuring that we are working in the intended zones.

    Even if we don't use HR max for our zones, note that the device still requires a solid value for HR max, because the Firstbeat algorithms use it to estimate VO2max, which is then used for many of the other performance metrics (Load/EPOC, Training Effect, Performance Condition, etc).

    Hope that helps, cheers!

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to Kyle J

    Thanks for the response, I really appreciate it!

    Cheers. 

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to Jvanfleet74

    Kyle J is right. Use LTHR based HR Zones - those are the way to go. Nevertheless, setting up the right Max HR is still very important, regardless what method you use for the zones. The Max HR value is used frequently in diverse algorithms in the watch. Also, you will not be able to measure your LTHR correctly, if you do not enter the true Max HR.

    Please note that neither the formula 220-age, nor the highest HR detected by the watch are the right values. You have to be able to sustain the Max HR for couple of tens of seconds, it should not be just an accidental peak of HR. Perform a Max HR test. Best done in a sports lab, but you can do it yourself too - search for the term on YouTube, or google it up - there are plenty of websites offering detailed instructions.

    Once set, disable the Max HR auto-detection, and repeat the Max HR test once a year (it lowers with the age, and it does not really increase with the fitness)