Working out with Heart Rate Monitor

I am a distance runner. I workout with a heart rate monitor nearly every day. I find it very beneficial, however be cautious of the ranges assigned to you. Those formulas and the ranges that come from them are based on a bell curve so they are only appropriate for roughly 20% of the population. the only real way to determine your personal ranges is to test. I won't get into it here, but you can google lactate threshold testing if you are really concerned about it. If not, the generic ranges won't hurt you (unless you have a very low threshold and you push into a range above what you should, that is DANGEROUS, otherwise you just won't be getting the maximum benefit, sometimes by a large margin.

Personally I have a very high lactate threshold, 179bpm, so my body runs at a higher heart rate during exercise. my zones are much higher than a friend of mine who is the opposite. We both have a resting heartrate in the high 50s, but when running I level out around 155bpm, and he is around 135. and sprinting I can hit numbers in the 180s without a problem and his body quits around 175. Then we both recover back to resting in about the same amount of time. everyone is different.

As for aerobic vs. anaerobic it is something to consider but the fact is, your body always does both at the same time, and it always burns fat and carbs at the same time. It never actually "flips the switch" that trainers like to talk about.

For example; If you were able to train at maximum effort for that particular exercise or running distance all the time you would see the greatest results. however we can't do that. We need time to recover or we will get hurt. and if we leave that much time between maximum effort sessions we won't get anywhere. Thats the real reason for the "aerobic zone"...it is to still work out, but do it in a way that allows the body to still exercise without doing further damage.