Training in heart rate zone 2 is an essential part of every exercise program. This is the zone that improves your general endurance: your body will get better at oxidizing – burning – fat and your muscular fitness will increase along with your capillary density. Heart rate zone 2: 60–70% of HRmaxĮxercising in heart rate zone 2 feels light and you should be able to go on for a long time at this intensity. To train at this intensity, pick a form of exercise that allows you to easily control your heart rate, such as walking or cycling. Training at this intensity will boost your recovery and get you ready to train in the higher heart rate zones. This HR zones chart shows the level of intensity and percentage of Maximum Heart Rate used in each one.īelow is a breakdown of what each heart rate zone means and what the benefits of training in that heart rate zone are. There are five different heart rate zones (1–5) and your training plan can (and should) include workouts in all five zones. But first, let’s look at what the different zones are. Understanding this can really help when considering heart rate zones exercise, especially your heart rate zones for running or heart rate zone training for weight loss. Heart rate zones are closely linked to your aerobic and anaerobic thresholds. Heart rate zones can be defined as percentages of your maximum heart rate. One simple way is to define them as percentages of your maximum heart rate, and that’s what we’ll focus on in this introduction. There are different ways to identify your heart rate zones calculation. And between these values are different HR zones that correspond to training intensity and training benefit. We all have a personal resting heart rate, ‘a minimum heart rate’, and a maximum heart rate. Unlike a purely subjective evaluation of intensity, your heart rate is a number you can measure, just like frequency and duration. Your heart rate is one of the best indicators of how hard your body is working during a workout. Intensity is a bit more complicated – and that’s where the heart rate zones come in.Duration is simple too: it’s how long you exercise at a time, usually counted in minutes.Frequency is easy to understand: it’s how many times you exercise per period of time, for example per week.It’s the variety that makes your workout regimen effective. This means that some workouts should be short and intense, some long and light, some can even be long and tough. There are five heart rate zones based on the intensity of training with regard to your maximum heart rate.Īn effective running plan or workout plan will include different types of workouts with varying frequency, duration, and intensity spaced out so that you have time to recover.
Heart rate zones, or HR zones, are a way to monitor how hard you’re training.