Moderate/Vigorous based on HR?

Endershadow

I've been stationary biking it and am wondering what the difference between moderate and vigorous workouts are. I'm wearing a heart rate monitor and have done workouts with avg HR of 140 (75%) as well as harder 150-160+ (85%) workouts.

So would the 75% be moderate, and the 85% be vigorous? My 85% workout's avg speed is over 22 mph, with high resistance intervals. There also is an option for outdoor biking by speed but that probably over estimates my calories burned.

And maybe very vigorous is closer to 90% max HR? I know it doesn't really matter but what do you guys think?

kateopotato

if you've been wearing a HRM you can add in your own exercises so the calories are accurate. I did that with the bike, I found what the database said wasn't really what my HRM or my bike said... so I entered my own... and now I adjust my minutes to equal out the calories (so even if I did 35 minutes if my exercise log says it was more calories than I actually burned I might log 28 or something)... sorry, dont know if that helped at all

Endershadow

The problem is my Garmin Forerunner tracks my kcal based on distance so it is useless on my stationary bike heh. Also, I can't enter my age and weight into my bike, so I don't really believe that...Guess I'll just go with the greater one

kponds

http://www.triathlontrainingblog.com/calculators/calories-burned-calculator-based-on-average-heart-rate/

Go to the above web address and use the table to input your info and heart rate starting at what you consider the low end of your heart rate (I used 130) and write down the calories you burn over an hour, Increase the HR by 2 and write down the new result. Continue going up until you get to the highest HR you think you'll ever see exercising.

Load into your myfitnesspal custom exercises for each heart rate as "General exercise - 130 bpm" and the resulting calories and 60 minutes based on what you got from the chart. Do that for each increment.

When you get thru, you now have several heart rates loaded into your program that will calculate your total calories burned based on average heart rate. As an example, last nite I ran/walked on the treadmill for 75 minutes using a 5 minute warmup, a 5 minute cooldown, and the rest running intervals between 4.5 mph for 4 minutes and walking 3.5 mph for 1 minute. My Garmin said my average heart rate was 140 bpm so I just entered pulled up general exercise for 140 bpm and entered 75 minutes.

To me, if you wear a HRM, this is the best way to go for calorie estimation if your watch doesn't calculate calories indoors. I use the GPS based fr305 watch for biking and running outdoors and usually use this formula for those exercises as well but the results are very close.