What Zone Do You Do Cardio In?

NorthCascades wrote: »

@albertabeefy Strava's power estimates are for entertainment purposes only. The fact that it says your ride was easy doesn't mean it really was, I just find it interesting to see where Strava does well and does badly at this.

Isn't that the truth. I was holding just shy of 50km/h on a slightly uphill segment today (only a 4m rise, but still...), and Strava says that segment was done at 92W. LOL. Go figure. Amazingly, the other people on the leaderboard with me are all well-over 300W for the same segment.

I just walk every night and do some moderate cardio now and then, not sure what zone that would be, but according to my doctor at my last physical my heart is in great shape. I think it depends on what your goals are. If I wanted to run in a marathon I'd have to do more intense cardio. If you just want to stay in decent shape and be healthy that kind of intensity level is not necessary.

Um, I walk in Eastern Standard time. I don't own anything like a heart rate monitor. *shrug*

bcalvanese wrote: »

So... how do you roll?

today's (easy) run (on zone 2 and 3 most of the time):

WhitneyDurham777 wrote: »

I actually like the Jack Daniels training zones instead of zone training.
Jack Daniels training zones
Repetition ( R) 200m,300m,400m repeats w full recovery improve running economy less than 5% training 2 min max
Interval (I) 98-100% stresses VO2max 3-5min max int at most 8% of weekly training.
Threshold (T) 88-92% should be able to hold this for 1hr less. “tempo runs” 3 to 10 intervals of 3 to 15 min with 20%-25% rest in between 10% training
Marathon (M) 80-90% 2hr runs or long int
Easy / Long (E/L) 65-79% most training up to 2.5 hours steady

This formula with a little bit of modification for time of year and periodization has work great for me.

Not sure what those percentages are, but they seem high for the duration being expected.

WhitneyDurham777 wrote: »

stanmann571 wrote: »

WhitneyDurham777 wrote: »

I actually like the Jack Daniels training zones instead of zone training.
Jack Daniels training zones
Repetition ( R) 200m,300m,400m repeats w full recovery improve running economy less than 5% training 2 min max
Interval (I) 98-100% stresses VO2max 3-5min max int at most 8% of weekly training.
Threshold (T) 88-92% should be able to hold this for 1hr less. “tempo runs” 3 to 10 intervals of 3 to 15 min with 20%-25% rest in between 10% training
Marathon (M) 80-90% 2hr runs or long int
Easy / Long (E/L) 65-79% most training up to 2.5 hours steady

This formula with a little bit of modification for time of year and periodization has work great for me.

Not sure what those percentages are, but they seem high for the duration being expected.

The percentages are the percentages of heart rate. His philosophy is based on training different systems VO2 max, aerobic, threshold, etc. Depending on your weakness you can work certain systems harder. These percentages are targeted towards endurance athletes. When you look at power profiles of track cyclists vs road racers you see there power vs time profiles are very different. As you get closer to the pointy end of the stick top athletes can hold a higher percentage of their heart rate longer than an untrained person. I have seen data where top athletes are if I am remembering correctly holding between 94%-96% of maximum heart rate for Marathons. The maximum heart rate that I have been able to hold for a marathon was 90% max.

If you're at 98-100% of max HR for 5 minutes, you've miscalculated your max HR

robertw486 wrote: »

I think some of the disagreement on ability to stay in different zones might be due to the fact that there is no one set standard that everyone uses. How many zones and how "wide" they are would greatly affect how many people could do longer workouts in the higher zones.

I agree. Zone 5 as I understand it from my metabolic tests, is the point at which you are burning ONLY carbohydrates as energy and it is an all out effort. With this understanding, it would not be possible to sustain this for more than a couple minutes max. This would be at an RQ of 1.0

bcalvanese wrote: »

Well I learned that back in the 80's, and back then it was used for more advanced athletes who could not get any more benefit from using MHR because the different zones using HRR yielded higher heart rates.

Not sure how it is used today, but that is what I learned back then.

I have been reading about this 180 - age thing and how training at lower heart rate (below lactate threshold) builds a good aerobic base. The thought is that it works a different muscle fiber than training above lactate threshold, but you're still in the cardio zone so you can still get a decent training effect.

I've tried this a few times, but not long enough to determine if it is working yet.

I do think mixing it up is probably a good thing.

My high school track coach followed a similar model in the 80s and my cross country build time (zones 2-3) was ~8:00 min/mi. This constitutes aerobic development phase and optimal energy efficiency. I joined the Navy in '95 and they used a similar model developed by the Navy Dive physiologists. Optimal development was determined to be in Zone 2-3, but with intermittent sprints at zones 4-5 for 30 second intervals. Most runs were baselined at 8:00 min/mi.

I've seen a few recent updates to this, but nothing game changing from the 80s.

rdridi12 wrote: »

robertw486 wrote: »

I think some of the disagreement on ability to stay in different zones might be due to the fact that there is no one set standard that everyone uses. How many zones and how "wide" they are would greatly affect how many people could do longer workouts in the higher zones.

I agree. Zone 5 as I understand it from my metabolic tests, is the point at which you are burning ONLY carbohydrates as energy and it is an all out effort. With this understanding, it would not be possible to sustain this for more than a couple minutes max. This would be at an RQ of 1.0

At max effort, measured RQ will be greater than 1.0. More like 1.10 to 1.15, maybe even higher. That's because of excess CO2 exhalation.

bcalvanese wrote: »

My intent today was to try the 180 - age method on a trail run. Since I have been training for the past 2 years and have shown improvement, I added 5 to that. So for me it is 180 - 59 + 5 = 126.

Well its very difficult to keep my heart rate that low trail running on hilly terrain (even at a less than 4 MPH pace), so it turned into a more intense workout.

If you scroll down to the stats and click on time in zones you can see how much time I spent in each zone.

https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/1772399320

Here is one I did the other day when I was at the shore. It was on flat land so no hills. Even though the pace was faster, my heart rate never really hit zone 5 because it was on roads with no hills.

https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/1763933990

I guess the 180 - age method is not suited for trail running.

It actually is. My normal 10-13 mile trail run out my backdoor and I do 11 min miles with an avg hr of 130-135.

If you wanted to spend $5, you can pick up maffrtones training for endurance 2nd ed. A very good resource. In it, you'll read that you need to stick with the plan for 6.months to a year. I spent 2. 5 months on a treadmill barely able to jog at 4.2 mph for more than 10 mins. Then it slowly started to come together for me...

I was shocked when I did the Maffetone method years ago, along with his diet, which the Zone diet from Sears later came out with same idea.

Took me about 2-3 weeks of running slower (per HR) before my pace started increasing and surpassed where I had been, for same HR. Had been running cross-country since middle school, pretty much similar training all the time.

But I could not accomplish it on the bike - just too much fun to go hard, could never hold back to keep HR low. So pretty much limited my benefit since so many shared muscles there, and of course the aerobic system.

But if the purpose of the workout is either endurance training, or frequent training where injury is just around the corner from overuse - it works great.

After VO2max tests later in life, that zone ended up being the bottom of the aerobic and top of the active recovery zones based on LT/AT HR. (speaking of which - mine was at 91% of HRR too, so I could sustain that for 30-40 min, longer if avg HR was used, so training can allow that high sustained intensity. No good for a marathon obviously)

Here's what got me years ago to try it - I was trying to improve my pace on the half-ironmans .

http://www.joefrielsblog.com/2010/04/mark-allens-training.html


Now I'll still use the mid-aerobic zone for runs, to keep them hopefully away from causing injury, so I can have more fun on the bike.