What is Involved in Heart Rate Training?

Ask anyone who considers themselves “out-of-shape” or over-weight will tell you that as soon as they push themselves physically – whether it is jogging, biking, climbing up a flight stairs – they feel as if their heart is going to explode out of their chest.  during exercise, doing it without proper understanding of the consequences is not exactly healthy or safe and can possibly be more dangerous than beneficial.  To be a  well conditioned athlete, you need to understand the concept of proper heart rate training so that you can save yourself the discomfort and possible danger of an overly elevated heart rate when you’re exercising.

Since the heart itself is a muscle, Heart rate training is much like exercising any other muscle in your body.  To work your arms or your legs, you would have started off with a lesser amount of weight, pushing yourself just a little bit beyond your threshold for a certain period of time until you got stronger.  As you get stronger, you are naturally able to increase the weight you’re lifting, increase the number of reps when you lift, or a combination of both.

One great aspect of specific heart rate training is your heart is getting a workout as soon as you increase your heart rate – regardless of what exercise you may be doing.  This is unlike your other specific muscles – if you are just running, your arms don’t get any real exercise.  If you are working on your chest and doing bench press, your legs won’t get any benefit.  But your heart IS getting some real fitness benefit since it is working harder to support your blood circulation and it is working harder while pushing weights since your heart needs to feed blood to your working muscle groups.  As a triathlete, aerobic exercise which is basically heart rate specific training, as well as core & strength training is necessary since you’ll need not just all-around endurance, but have extended core muscle strength & endurance which will also come with increased aerobic capacity.  When you swim, you use your muscles to propel you through the water but it’s an aerobic activity as well; this also applies to the basic strength and muscle requirements of cycling and running as well.

Obviously, having a good heart rate monitor is necessary and you’re anaerobic the whole time, you may need to build up your leg strength to cope with the added load of cycling – as your legs grow stronger, your cardiovascular system won’t have to work as hard to move yourself up that hill.  Just remember to start slowly when heart rate training and work your way up to your desired endurance and strength levels.