Today I am going to talk about something that Powerlifters almost never do, and I hate, but we NEED. In Old Man Conjugate: Monitor Your Heart Rate I’ll go over a few reasons why monitoring your heart rate is very beneficial.

And, I’ll make it quick and unscientific.

As a Coach, I have been assigning different types of Heart Rate Zone training for decades to clients for various reasons.

  • Specificity
  • Health
  • GPP
  • VO2 Max Improvement
  • And more

Before we go into why all of you followers of Old Man Conjugate should Monitor Your Heart Rate, let’s give a brief outline of the 5 zones.

All percentages are of your theoretical maximum heart rate. Figure this out with this formula:

220-your age.

EG:

56 years old

220-56=164

Your max heart rate is 164 beats per minute. Theoretically.  

For rough estimates of each zone, let’s use the following:

Zone 1: Up to 60%

Sitting on your lazy boy chair to doing virtually no activity

Zone 2: 60-70%

Light exercise, walking, doing housework, working out at Planet F1tness, etc.

Zone 3: 70-80%

Moderate exercise. Your typical gym goer doing a set and sitting down on the phone for 10 minutes, or hitting the treadmill or elliptical and using a preprogrammed session.

Zone 4: 80-90%

Hard Exercise

harder steady state cardio, harder circuit training etc.

Zone 5: 90-100%

Sprinting, HARD Met Con circuits, Heavy Bag work, catching the Prowler Flu, etc.

Now these are all estimates and you can find a chart that has slightly different percentages online.

Cool.

I know.

Let’s use these for now.

So, why should you Monitor Your Heart Rate?

The easiest answer is that what gets measured gets managed.

  • Are you trying to improve an aspect of your cardiovascular fitness?
  • Prep for a needs specific event?
  • Manage cardio for recovery?
  • Improve baseline endurance?
  • The list of the why’s is endless.

But, if you don’t know where you are how do you know if you are doing too much or too little?

You don’t, you’re just guessing.

Old Man Conjugate: Monitor Your Heart Rate-How?

I’m not going to go over more of the why’s and how’s of various HRZ methods of training. I simply wanted to bring to your attention that you can get a heart rate monitor for about $30 and start tracking whatever Zones you are in for a few weeks. Then you’ll have data to adjust to meet your specific goals.

  • Have a goal and a plan
  • Collect some data
  • Adjust training to suit your goal based on the data.
  • Pretty simple.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get into Zone 3 for about 40 minutes and walk hills with Brandy .  

Old Man Conjugate, Monitor Your Heart Rate, Brandy the Pit Bull

 Did you miss last week’s log?

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Vincere vel mori

C.J. Murphy

October 24, 2024

Total Performance Sports