When doing cardio on a machine what is the percentage of your goal heart rate?

ladybug4233

I cycle twice a week and do cardio and resistance training 3 days a week. I usually get my heart rate up to 90% or higher. Is it ok to drop it to 80% or so? Just wondering what you guys do. Thanks.

nooshi713

I just try to work our hard but according to guidelines on the cardio machines my heart rate is regularly between 70-90% of my maximum.

TavistockToad

I don't look at my HR, I just run easy miles.

sijomial

Unless you have actually tested your max HR then that could be a very rough estimate.
But it's OK to train at any HR from very low to very high (assuming you are heart healthy...) - it depends on what you are trying to achieve.

What I do depends entirely on the purpose on a particular training session - sprints, FTP under/over sessions, steady state at different intensities etc.. I rarely do endurance training indoors though as it's very dull.

AnnPT77

There's no particular heart rate we need to achieve to lose weight or burn fat.

Doing the exercise burns calories. Doing it more intensely for the same amount of time burns more calories. Doing it too intensely for too long is potentially counterproductive to weight loss, because it causes excess fatigue which tends to reduce daily-life calorie burn (from having less energy for work/chores and resting more, basically).

To improve fitness in a generalized sense, we simply need to keep challenging ourselves a little, in a manageable way, with adequate recovery.

To improve physical performance in a specific way(s), such as to perform better at a specific sport, we may need to manage intensity, which typically means a planned schedule of workouts at a range of durations and intensities. Monitoring heart rate at a more detailed level can facilitate that.

If one isn't in this athletic performance scenario, heart rate isn't a big deal in itself. Usually, the sweet spot is to keep the intensity challenging but fun, so the exercise energizes the rest of our day, rather then leaving us fatigued or dragging.

If you're relying on a machine's estimate of your maximum heart rate, or an age-based formula, there's a reasonably good chance that the estimate is incorrect, so the percentages and rangers are inaccurate, anyway.

So: Using our energy level as à guide is fine for most of us.

restlessleukocyte

If you’re trying to build cardiovascular endurance you may actually WANT to drop it back to 70% or so. There are a lot of articles you can find online about targeting your cardio training to various goals, so I’ll just briefly summarize the major 3 training regimes and what each is accomplishing.

Steady, easy pace where it’s easy for you to have a conversation: endurance. You’re building your ability to go for longer, literally making more capillaries and increasing your capacity to get energy to your muscles. This should be the bulk of your cardio work, it forms the foundation on which everything else is built.

Hard pace, talking only in short choppy bursts, you can keep this up for more than a minute but it’s not fun: threshold. You’re around the boundary of your aerobic/anaerobic threshold, where your body can no longer supply the rate of energy demands only through the aerobic cycle. Some of your energy is produced anaerobically (“without oxygen”) which can deliver more power, but can’t be sustained for nearly as long because waste products start to accumulate and cause fatigue. It sounds like you’re somewhere in this range. This is good, you’ll be able to sustain this pace for longer with time, as you become more efficient at clearing the waste products and more accustomed to the discomfort.

Anything higher and you’re getting into V02 max territory, around 95% max HR. This is the range you should hit for your “high” intervals if you’re doing HIIT, you won’t be able to talk and you shouldn’t be able to sustain this for more than a minute. This type of training will increase your speed, power, and V02 max - essentially the maximum amount of oxygen you can uptake and use as energy with each heartbeat. Unless you’re an elite athlete (and probably even then), you shouldn’t do this sort of work more than 1-2 times/week. You can certainly do regular intervals more often, but if you’re going as all-out as you should be here, you need time to recover and let the physiological adaptations happen. This sort of training is very stressful.