No doubt, a HRM gives you an overview of the effort at which you body is delivering in a training or a race. After all, the reason the heart is beating, is to pump blood and then oxygen and fuel to your muscle cells to perform. The more fuel and O2 needed - the higher your pulse. There´s a nice close-to-linear relationship between effort delivered and your pulse. However, it´s not (as many think) perfect, but for the novice athlete its a great tool to measure and plan your effort in trainings. Below some pros and cons from my side - let me hear some of your experiences as comments here, thanks:
Pros:
- Gives you the ability to express your effort as a % of a max pulse. As mentioned, testing Max pulse is not too healthy - instead use Functional Threshold pulse (explained in "Going Long" and here on the blog)
- Works as an early indicator "life saver" in case you are having (1 out of 50000 rookies in marathons do have) a heart attack during training or racing. Stop if your pulse suddenly max out with no obvious reason.
- Gives you a good indication of when you are working out and when you are training. Stop working out - start training.
Cons:
- HRM can be deceiving, since it IS not very precise. E.g. I can do a 40mins 10K run at 81% of max HR one day. And a week later do the same test, only to find that my HR was 89%. Nobody can (still) explain this deviation - but certainly it has to do with sleep, food, stress and we all know that substances like cigarettes and coffee put the heart under an extra stress. Don´t make HRM an exact science - it´s NOT!
- "Optimal Fat Burning Rate" is a myth invented by producers of Treadmills - forget it, it´s too low to be a good training anyway.
Get a good HRM:
Nowadays the producers of HRM are struggling to win this huge market, introducing Oh-so-great features in many colors and facets. A HRM can be a cheap tool, that (by the end of the day) must only support the ability to measure:
- your HR here and now
- express it as a % of your max pulse (or Functional Threshold Pulse)
- average pulse over the course of a training
It can be nice to have a water proof HRM and timing for swimming - Garmin is NOT!
Personally, I don´t use HRM. I dropped it after various conversations with my coach Marcel Zamora (5 times winner of IM France), who is very explicit on the downsides of HRM. Also I push myself a bit harder if I can, without looking at my wrist every now and then. And finally time seems to fly by faster in my trainings.
Please comment - let me know what you think about HRM - Cheers T
Hola Thomas, good read!
ReplyDeleteI use a HR monitor when training (well; excercising I guess you'd call it;-)) and you are certainly right it has it's set backs. I'm particularly prone to heat and hydration....my HR goes up by 8-10 beats for the same percieved effort on a warm day or if I haven't re-hydrated properly from previous work outs. The phenomenon is called cardiac drift (good name for a band!?) and it's frustrating like buggar!!! When your body is exposed to heat the blood will try and cool your skin thus leaving a lesser volume of blood for the excercising muscles, organs etc. Well, then the heart just turns it up a notch to increase the blood flow once again. There are definetely other factors in play also, as you mentioned above: smoking, sleep, coffee (but who wants to miss out on the cappucino during the stop on a 5 hour ride?).
When running the marathon last years as part of Challenge Copenhagen my heart rate started at a comfortable 145bpm and then rose quickly to 152'ish and ended at a comfortable 165; same speed for 42km's. My point? The plan was to run at approximately 142bpm which I didn't 'cause my percieved effort at the somewhat higher HR was the same as I've had at 142bpm during training....so I agree with you Thomas: HR is great for novices but can be very confusing and work contradictory to your aims and goals of your training if not understood 100%.
I continue to use my Garmin 310xt for a little while longer though....
Ciao Muchachos
Daniel