How to determine optimal cardiac aerobic exercise

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edmund36
edmund36 Posts: 5 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
My heartrate does not increase much doing cardio, such as bike or treadmill, due to my medications. I don't believe the Hr moves more than 10 points if that? Anyone know of a most effective way to determine the optimal cardiac rate and or machine speed and or resistance. Example on the bike I go about 70 rpm at a 4 resistance setting. I do this machine without exerting myself greatly. Any suggestions to get better results?

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  • pridesabtch
    pridesabtch Posts: 2,340 Member
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    Given you are on medication, you should consult your doctor before beginning an exercise regiment. Find out what they feel is an optimal working heart rate for you then try to achieve that by altering your work out.

    I would say find a balance where you feel as if you are working at it, but can sustain for a set period of time (say 30 minutes). Challenge yourself on the bike by increasing your cadence or upping the resistance.

    A great way to increase intensity on the treadmill is to increase the incline %.

    Good Luck! Talk to your doc!
  • NorthCascades
    NorthCascades Posts: 10,970 Member
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    There's a thing called "the traveling salesman problem," it's a good metaphor for a lot of things in life. If a salesman (or saleswoman) needs to visit a lot of different potential customers, you could find the optimal route by measuring the distance of every path between all of them. But it adds up quickly, and soon you have so many destinations that it would take impossibly long to check them all. You get to a place where it's impossible to know the optimal route, and have to settle for one that's good enough.

    There are a lot of motivations to exercise, and a lot that we get from it. Sometimes the perfect can be the enemy of the good. My advice is forget the optimal exercise and try a bunch until you find ones you enjoy.
  • sijomial
    sijomial Posts: 19,811 Member
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    So many questions spring to mind! You really do have to be more forthcoming and specific about you and what you are trying to achieve. All anyone knows about you is you are a male of unknown age on meds that affects their HR.
    Have you had any guidance from your Doctor? (When I was on beta blockers the Doc told me clearly what I could do and what I could expect.)

    What do you mean by optimal?
    Optimal for who? (Exercise HR ranges are enormously different for people of different ages, often also for same age.)
    Optimal for what goal? Health? Fitness? If fitness what kind? Short distance/duration, speed or endurance?
    Results? What kind?
    If your meds put a cap on your exercise HR what would you do if the "optimal" HR is higher than you can achieve?

    Re. Machine speed - there is no unversal "speed" for indoor bikes apart from zero as they don't actually move and displayed speed bears little relation to the same effort outdoors. Ditto machine resistance, each brand has different settings, even models within brands...

    I know my best HR for different cycling performance and training goals but that's come from 40,000+ miles of practice and those numbers are personal to me. The Tour de France is on right now and my optimal performance numbers for HR would be a source of much amusement to those chaps!
    BTW if you want to improve as a cyclist one obvious route would be to increase your cadence as 70rpm is pretty low.
  • ninerbuff
    ninerbuff Posts: 48,574 Member
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    As mentioned above, optimal for what? Running a race? Getting done in a certain distance? Getting something done in a certain time frame?

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  • Xellercin
    Xellercin Posts: 924 Member
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    I'm assuming you're on beta blockers?

    Optimal depends on your goals. You don't need to condition your heart to intense cardio unless you have a specific performance goal that requires improvement in a certain form of heart function.

    If your goal is overall health and fitness, then just do exercises that strengthen you in the type of fitness you want to do.

    You don't have to be constantly chasing gains unless you're competing or targeting a specific performance goal.

    Basically, don't get tied up in minutae of measurements. Just exercise, challenge yourself, and enjoy the process of getting stronger.

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