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Percent of Max Heart Rate questions

Former Member over 10 years ago

Started training using the "% of Maximum Heart Rate" reading for training.

1. How is "% of Maximum Heart Rate" (%MHR) calculated? and how is it different from the usual "% of Heart Rate" (%HR)?

2. Is it possible to set alerts on the Edge 500 or Edge 510 (I've got on inbound in a week or so, so haven't got it in my hands) that tell me when I step outside specific areas of either "% of MHR" or "HR (bpm)"?

The other option is for me to calculate the %HR compared to %MHR and the set up my zones accordingly, but then I still need an answer to question 1, which I'm having little luck finding - they always lead back to "what's your maximum HR?" equations.

0 JSRUNNER_ over 10 years ago

Not familiar with this device but it looks like you can do what you want - if you look in the manual http://static.garmincdn.com/pumac/Edge_510_OM_EN.pdf :)

In regard to part 1 of your question not quite sure what you mean here - how do you calculate % of heart rate? Below is an excerpt from another forum post - I hope this helps - the zones in connect are set by %MHR

I understand your confusion. A survey of various sports websites reveals as many methods of determining zones as there are experts. I have attached a chart showing 11 different zone calculations for comparison with the Garmin zone allocation. It can be seen that the Garmin zones are lower than most (but not all) other methods. One source of confusion is that some methods (like Garmin) use % Maximum Heart Rate (% MHR) while others use % Heart Rate Range or Reserve (% HRR). HRR is Maximum Heart Rate - Minimum Heart Rate. For example if your max HR is 180 and your min HR is 70 then 50% HRR = (180-70)*0.5+70 = 125 bpm, while 50%MHR = 180*0.5 = 90 bpm which is quite a difference.

https://forums.garmin.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=12619&d=1373168827

In the attached chart all methods are calculated using an assumed maximum HR of 180 bpm and where required a minimum of 70 bpm. The methods with abbreviated names and a number in square brackets after them are obtained from the digifit website while the other methods are named by their website.

To add to the confusion, some methods have 5 zones while others have 4 or 6. Yet others (not on the chart) split zone 5 into 5a, 5b and 5c making effectively 7 zones.