In the zone/heart rate

For me, I've generally followed the formula of "220 minus my age". On workouts, I would usually be at the higher end of my range for my pulse, but still in the "zone'. It comes down to how you feel when you're out there running, or working out.

Really depends on your goals for the exercise.

Purely to burn calories so you can eat more despite having a deficit?
Endurance training for races?
Cardiovascular health?

How often do you do cardio, and for how long?

And if you saw 179, and you weren't dying almost and needed to stop out of breath, I'd suggest you go in to the Settings - Personal and look for HR maximum, and confirm it's set to about 185, because the default guess of 220-age for women has more chance of being wrong by 10 bpm than being within that range and right.

This has nothing to do with getting an accurate reading - you are getting that already.

They have 2 zones, fat-burning zone because apparently that myth is still strong enough to build to, and fitness zone, which is way to wide of a zone.
As you keep working out, that line will adjust.

You can also set an upper zone alarm do divide things better depending on why you are doing cardio.

Ignore the zone thing, it's pointless and means nothing. Workout as hard and/or as long as you can. Repeat as necessary.

Only exception I can see is if you're aiming for a particular heart rate to pace yourself. If you wanted to run a marathon I doubt you could sustain 190 heart rate for the entire time, so you'd want to shoot for a particular range to ensure you can go the distance. This is just as an example, for the purposes of using heart rate as a tool. If you're not doing anything like that, don't sweat it.

Lol.. I guess so. I have no idea! It just says "in the zone" I don't know the difference between the zones I guess. I know I'm not wanting to maintain, I wanna be burning fat/carbs? I'm sure I sound crazy but its all new

You sitting there at the computer are burning almost totally fat. You start moving more you burn more and more carbs at part of what you burn, until you are at upper reaches of aerobic zone, where it's total carbs, no fat.

You exercise, you are burning a ratio of fat and carbs together.

But it is good to find out. You have little to lose. That means your margin for error is small.
Someone with a lot to lose can do all kinds of things wrong and still lose, maybe not as great as if things are done best.

But with little to lose, you doing things wrong can foul things up. So it was good to ask.
To many people think they'll just do straight cardio day after day, as hard as they possibly can.
And they will lose muscle mass. So all out is not best either.

Hey tonya_yates,

I was wondering the exact same thing... I'm using my Polar ft4 to assess my calories burnt and heart rate levels, and during 1 hour teaching Zumba it says I spend around only 10 minutes in the zone... with my average HR being 188bpm.

Using the method of 220-age, My max is 194bpm, but I think the watch is set to lower.

Is it 'healthy' to be out of this Zone? I'm pretty fit and workout at a high intensity level whilst teaching (so shouting as well!) so I don't feel like its bad to be working out to that level as I can handle it no problem...

Some people say its a bad thing to be working out so hard... really??!!

If your HRmax is set to 194 (and it will be on Polar unless you change it), then you hitting 188 avg for an hr means the HRmax figure is wrong.
Which also means your calorie burn is very inflated.

If you did it for an hr at 188, that means you were still in aerobic zone, probably the top level of it. Which means on avg about 85% of HRmax, so that would give better estimate of 221 HRmax.

Now, your top of Aerobic zone may be better than 85% HRmax, if you have always worked out that high. In which case you may be at 90% HRmax, and that means 209 HRmax.

As to is always at that level healthy? Sure, you are totally training your carb-burning system though, and even though that will extend your aerobic range on the high end, it also means your body will go to bigger ratio of carb burning even at lower levels, because that's what it knows.

So that means if you are eating at a deficit, you really got to be careful to get enough carbs in. You could very easily after several days be depleted in carb stores, which means during your workout muscle breakdown will begin to provide those.
Only benefit to Zumba over say running or cycling is at least the carb usage is coming from many more muscles, not just the biggest leg muscles, so that may help.

But consider that probably 90-100% of those calories burned is carbs. Do you eat that many calories in carbs after the workout and before the next one, plus extra since you burn carbs rest of the day too?

So if you are not teaching daily, your body would benefit from fat-burning training too to offset the high end training. So alternate hard and easy days. Even more so at deficit if desiring to lose weight, because high-end is very stressful on body anyway, and stress makes it harder to lose weight and fat.