EVERYTHING You Need To Know About Threshold Heart Rate: What is it, How To Calculate It & Use It

If you'd like to discover more about MAXIMUM Heart Rate, you may find this video extremely helpful: https://youtu.be/w7DOqwNEyIc

I really like this video regarding using the Average Heart Rate (LTHR) instead of using the MHR to find the heart rate training zones. In your video you didn't explain the formula to calculate for each heart rate training zones. Can you explain the formula so I can calculate each of my training zones when using the average heart rate (LTHR) Thanks

Perfect !! Loved the video , always helpful xxxxxxxxx

This makes much more sense than MHR. I am a new runner (6 mos), coming into it from spending 6-8 hour days hiking technical trail at 4-5 km/hr. On an elliptical for 30 min at perceived exhertion similar to HIIT on 'hard trail' my HR is 164-172. I recover to under 100 in 2 minutes. My RHR is 56-60. At 63 years of age my ARHR would be 220-63=157 and Target heart rate at 70% of that is 110 ... couldn't stay there for even a slow run at my comfortable cadence. Thanks for explaining the THR rationale.

I am older so have some knowledge of the way things were done in the past. I have been training to heart rate for a very long time. Probably more than 30 years. I guess I lived by a book on heart rate training and in that book they did the simple test of slowly increasing speed until the hear rate would start to increase quickly So sort of linearly for a while and then the slop would take off upwards. Also this is the point where your breathing would increase from maybe faster in the beginning but then again increase sharply. I think this was called your Anerobic threshold. Over the years this has been easy to check on every ride or run I did. You could run comfortably and then as you hit that threshold it was not so easy. I have seen that this number only varies slightly over the year and over years as well. It does not depend on your ability to push to some limit which is easy for elite athletes but for us common ones who have the reality of life and sometimes not enough training being able to push hard for 30 minutes is a big variable as sometimes you can really go fast for you for a long time and other times your body wins the discussion and you cannot go fast. I see the point where max is even harder to achieve because maximum effort is variable based on fitness and fatigue and stress. I had good success and fewer injuries when I learned to keep my pace below my AT. The old adage was was feel the burn where you trained as hard as you could most of the time. Thankfully that has gone to the wayside. But I guess my question is could a person base a training schedule and zones using AT and not your Threshold method that I guess takes the average of a hard workout which I have to imagine for weekend warriors would show spikes of increased heart rates with dips as they recover from going to hard and then repeat that. I know elite athletes have a remarkable ability to set a pace and maintain that almost exactly for long periods of time.

Fantastic video.

5:00 this is gold, talking Zones and how to caculate! using Threshhold HR is something I must agree with!

superb 😀

There's a number of comments below that ask about each boundary as a percentage of threshold hr. Would be nice to know each boundary ( for me personally, lower bound for Z2 is what I need ).

Excellent thanks. Is the zone 2 number simply 80-85% of threshold, or is it 0.8x(threshold-resting)+resting?

Best one yet for me. Thanks for explaining threshold so well.

Very informative. I like the idea of working off the threshold HR rather than peak. I did a hard run and apparently my peak was 191, I am 55 years old so had serious doubts. However the average for a 2mile (15min) run (which is race pace for me) was 170. So will be using this as my threshold for now. Got a 5 mile race soon, will use my HR monitor during this and press lap after ten mins so should get an average for the next 25 mins or so. Great videos, loving your work.

Excellent point that upper and lower Z2 have the same* physiological-energy-expenditure benefit! I believe that far too many runners are trying to be overly precise when they attempt to carve this zone up into multiple zones. All we really need to know, and relative-subjective perceived effort is just fine for this (no need for HR monitors), are two zones: our low intensity zone and our high intensity zone...KIS. *same mitochondrial metabolic regimes activated, the fat and glycogen ones, not the lactate one

Great video - on my Grmin it allows me to enter Lactate Threshold Heart rate - is this the same thing please?

3:00 -- My HR does not stay steady over time UNLESS I ease up on the speed I'm running at. IF I do not drop my speed, my HR just climbs and climbs.

can you use the method on say rowing???? thanks

Excellent information

Very interesting - many thanks! If one knows the lactate threshold heart rate and trains according to the respective LTHR zones (1-5), how about racing? Is there any guidance in which LTHR zone your marathon (Z3?), half marathon (Z4?) and 10K (LTHR?) should be? Alternatively, is there a simple calculator, where one can 'translate' a LTHR or a race result into LTHR zones for other distances?

I'm using a battery operated finger tip device to get Heart BPM readings. Do consider this type of equipment to be accurate ???

If you can't run, will cycling work also or are there adjustments to be made in the numbers to account for the different type of stress?