How to Train With Heart Rate Zones

Heart rate zones are a way to describe how hard you work during a cardio workout, like running or cycling. The faster your heart beats, the harder you work. So an easy jog can put you in zone 2 during a full-body workout, while a HIIT workout can bounce you between zones 1 and 5. Read on to find out what heart rate zones are, how to use them, and some of the caveats you need to know when training this way.

One quick thing before we dive in: Heart rate zones are for cardio. Cardio means exercise that involves doing the same rhythmic movement over and over again, such as running, swimming, or climbing stairs. Heart rate zones mean nothing for strength training, even if you have an app or watch that tells you about them like they’re important.

What are heart rate zones?

When you do cardio, your heart has to beat faster to deliver nutrients and oxygen to your muscles. Your heart rate is the number of times your heart beats per minute. So if you can easily measure your heart rate (which watches and fitness trackers allow), you have a number that tells you how hard you’re working.

The exact numbers you’ll see for hard and easy workouts are different for everyone, so we have the idea of ​​heart rate “zones.” Depending on exactly how your watch or app calculates it, you may see something like a “zone 2” when your heart rate is between 50% and 70% of maximum. A slightly more intense workout might put you in zone 3. In many systems, the highest zone, for the most difficult parts of the hardest workouts, is zone 5.

Once you know your zones, you can follow workouts or goals for those zones. For example, you can go jogging and try to keep your heart rate in zone 2 for 30 minutes. Then, on another day, you might do a workout that aims to have you pedaling hard in zone 4 for several minutes at a time, with a recovery time where you pedal gently in zone 1.

Each zone has its advantages. Most often, you’ll hear people talking about Zone 2 low-fatigue aerobic work or the benefits of paced work that occurs primarily in Zone 4. But there’s a lot to be said for getting a variety of work in all the different zones. Each zone is good for you, even zone 3 which is sometimes wrongly painted as a “gray zone” where nothing happens. (Hot take: Zone 3 is great and most of us could use a little more.)

Don’t worry too much about zones as a beginner

Before I explain how to find and use your zones, I’ll start with a huge warning. You may hear everyone talking about zone this and zone that, but if you’re new to exercise or heart rate tracking, it’s actually best to ignore zones for a while. Pay more attention to how you feel. A workout that’s supposed to be easy should be easy, regardless of the number on your heart rate monitor. A workout that’s supposed to be hard should be hard.

Over time, if you monitor your heart rate during exercise, you will begin to notice which numbers correspond to which sensations. Knowing that you see (for example) 140 on your watch when you’re in the middle of an easy workout means a lot more than knowing that your device considers it “zone 2.”

Zone workouts are difficult to follow for beginners, for several reasons:

• It can be difficult to stay in your zones, especially lower zones like zone 2. If your heart rate skyrockets to zone 4 as soon as you start jogging, a zone 2 jog just may not be possible at the moment.

• Your zones may not be calibrated correctly. You need an accurate maximum heart rate to properly set your zones (more on that below), and an age-based formula is not guaranteed to be correct.

• You have more important things to do than stick to zones! Your body needs to learn technique, rhythm and all kinds of physical and psychological skills. Every brain cell you devote to obsessing over areas is a brain cell that is unavailable for the more important tasks ahead of you.

Remember, the reason your watch tells you your heart rate is because it’s something it can easily measure and display:not because it is the most important thing you need to pay attention to.

Be aware that the zones are different from one application to another

There is not just one heart rate zone system! There are dozens, if not hundreds. Some have three zones, some four, some five and some even more. Even when two apps or wearables use a five-zone system, they don’t necessarily define zone boundaries in the same places. For example, some systems will set “zone 2” between 60% and 70% of your maximum heart rate, while others will use between 65% and 75%.

The different systems also do not agree on the nature of these percentages. Sometimes it’s maximum heart rate, which we’ll talk about below; sometimes it’s heart rate reserve, which also takes into account your resting heart rate. More rarely, you might find zones based on other measurements like lactate threshold.

The most common five-zone system

I know you won’t be happy until you see me put together a table of numbers, so here you go. It’s not the only zone system, but it’s one that works pretty well in most cases, and you’ll find versions of it in several different apps and handheld devices. It’s not the best, but it may be the simplest. You will need to know your maximum heart rate (MHR), then you can take percentages of it to know your zones:

• Area 1: 50% to 60% of your maximum heart rate (MHR), although some systems go as high as 65%

• Area 2: 61% to 70% of the MHR; some systems will go up to 75%

• Area 3: 71% to 80%, or it could be more like 76% to 85%

• Area 4: 80% to 90%, or sometimes 85% to 95%

• Area 5: Up to 100%

In these systems, zone 1 is intended for warm-ups or very easy recovery between intervals. Zone 2 is for easy aerobic training, like light jogging, something you can do for hours if you’re reasonably fit. Zone 3 is for things that feel like medium intensity, like faster jogging, something that would tire you out for more than an hour, but you can maintain it fairly consistently. Zone 4 is where things get intense, usually for a few minutes at a time, and you’ll only move into zone 5 for a few minutes. seconds during your toughest intervals. You can’t continue working in zone 5 much longer than that.

How to find your maximum heart rate

Now that you know the zones, all you’re missing is your maximum heart rate, which is the basis of all of them.

Typically, these systems will recommend that you subtract your age from the number 220 to find your maximum heart rate. Sometimes they will use another formula. But these formulas are often wrong, since they give a single number for everyone at the same age. We’re supposed to believe that all 43-year-olds have a maximum heart rate of 177, but in reality there are plenty of 43-year-olds with a maximum heart rate over 200, and it’s not uncommon to find 43-year-olds with a maximum heart rate in the 150 range. (Similar caveats apply to any age.) The person with the 200 maximum will wonder why they’re still in the ” zone 4” when they feel like they are in zone 2, and the person with the maximum 150 will wonder why they feel like they are dying when they are in “zone 3”.

So don’t rely on a formula, especially if you see areas that don’t make sense compared to how a workout feels. Ideally, you’ll do a maximum heart rate test like I describe here, or make an educated guess by looking for the highest heart rate recorded by your device during one of your toughest workouts.

What each heart rate zone should look like

You can give a little reminder of the reality of your zones by ensuring that they feel RIGHT. This is what they should look like:

• Area 1 you will feel very easy, hardly like you are exercising.

• In zone 2you will start to feel hot and sweaty, but you will still be able to carry on a conversation easily.

• In zone 3your breathing will become a little heavier. The lower end of zone 3 is still reserved for conversations, but towards the top of this zone you will only be able to speak a few words at a time.

• In zone 4You’re working hard and you’re not in the mood to talk, but you probably feel like you could keep this effort going for a while, or at least a few more minutes.

• Area 5 is your absolute maximum speed, and you can only sustain it for a few grueling seconds.

If you’re not sure what your maximum heart rate is, try using this effort level guide for a while. When you actually get to a workout that requires zone 5, give it your all, then check your heart rate monitor to see what number it gave you.

How to stay in zone 2?

I’ve got more on Zone 2 here, including what it is, how to do it, and why it might be a little overrated. Zone 2 refers to an easy effort that you can continue virtually indefinitely. If you’re a beginner, walking can be a zone 2 workout. For an athlete, zone 2 can be a brisk jog that they can maintain for a few hours. The best marker of a zone 2 workout is that you stop because time is up, not because you are too tired to continue.

There’s nothing special about staying in zone 2, except that it’s not very strenuous so you can get a lot done. If you notice your heart rate reaching zone 3, honestly, that’s totally fine. The more you exercise, the more you need to pay attention to its intensity. Athletes who exercise 10 hours a week need to make sure some of these workouts are easy. But if you’re doing a few 30-minute jogging or exercise classes, any intensity is fine, as long as you finish most workouts feeling good and not totally exhausted.