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My Maximum Heart Rate Seems too High? What am I doing wrong please?

3779764
over 1 year ago

Hi, I am loving my Garmin 955 watch, but I am having one problem that I still can't seem to solve.

I'm 53 and I am trying to do the daily suggested workouts and I have it set to do this via heart rate rather than pace (I also wear a Garmin chest heart rate monitor).

  • I have Autodetection set to On for Max HR, Threshold and FTP.
  • If it helps my VO2 Max is 42

The problem I have is that my watch based on all my activities sets my max heart rate to 181bpm. So when I try to do the guided threshold runs there's no way I am get my heart rate anywhere near some of the bpm values it wants me to achieve. 

So I decided to do a guided lactate test and I have added an image of that here. It didn't detect a threshold, but you can see I reached a high point of about 155bpm. It wanted me to go higher (up to 175bpm) but that was the max for me as at that point I was exhausted and could not get my pulse higher. 155bpm seems to be that spot where I am dying.

Can anyone please advise me as to what I should have set at my Max HR please? As it always seems to automatically go back to a Max Rate of 181, but that makes any of the threshold runs completely undoable for me. 

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  • +1 over 1 year ago
    3779764 said:
    Can anyone please advise me as to what I should have set at my Max HR please?

    That is a difficult question indeed - as all of the formulas are not very precise and reaching your HRmax in reality is also near to impossible for non-Pros (and also dangerous to some degree if your are not 100% sure that your heart is completely healthy).

    You gave us your age, for Sally Edwards formula we would also need your weight, I assumed 75 kg.
    So, this gives us these HRmax values:

    Age 53
    Weight (kg) 75
    Max HF
    220 - Age 167 220 - Age (varies by 30)
    Sally Edwards: 179,25 Male: HFmax = 214 − 0,5 × Age − 0,11 × Weight (kg) (varies by 10)
    Winfried Spanaus: 175,3 Male: HFmax = 223 − 0,9 × Age (varies by 10)
    Lineare Regression: 170,9 HFmax = 208 − 0,7 × Age (varies by 10)
    175
    Zone from to Metric
    Regeneration 87,5 105 50-60%
    Aerobic 1 105 122,5 60-70%
    Aerobic 2 122,5 140 70-80%
    Intensive 140 157,5 80-90%
    Anaerobic 157,5 175 90-100%

    You see, the formulas give values between 167 an 179. Why Garmin gives you even more (181) - don't know.

    Let's assume that your real HRmax is 175 then your zones would be like above. 153 still woul be below your treshold.
    I don't know how plausible it is, that you are not able to reach your anaerobic zone.
    I know that some people have problems doing that because of using beta blockers, also it would be plausible if you are not trained so well and your muscles can't generate the power you need.

    If you like, you could share some more information about you.

    If I were you. I would start with setting the HRmax lower than 181 manually (select a value from above, maybe), but still let the autodetection on and see what the watch makes out of it in the next trainings.

    3779764 said:
    It didn't detect a threshold, but you can see I reached a high point of about 155bpm. It wanted me to go higher (up to 175bpm) but that was the max for me

    From my experience, even IF your HRmax was 181, it would not be so easy to reach 175.
    My HRmax is 184 according to formulas and Garmin (they agree) and to get past 175 I need to really be fresh, do a interval run and maybe also have a hill there to intensify the load. Even then, I almost never reach 180, more like 178 or 179.

    So to get that close to your HRmax is not easy.

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to Grumpy from dawn till dusk

    Thats so so helpful thanks so much :)