How Hard Are You Working?
When you’re training for an event, it’s important to know how hard your body is working so that you can continue to make progress in building your endurance and conditioning. There are lots of ways to measure this — you can buy a heart rate monitor and wear it each time you do a cardio workout, training walk or run, or bike ride; or you can learn to use simple techniques to keep an eye on your exertion level.
The easiest is the talk test. If your pace is low to moderate, you can carry on a conversation and breathe easily. At a moderate to high pace, you can still talk, but breathing is harder and you can’t carry on an involved conversation. You can get out a short sentence, but that’s about it. At a high pace, your breathing is labored and your conversation consists of one-word answers to your training partner’s questions. (And if your partner is able to carry on a conversation while you’re spitting out one-word answers, you know you have some work to do on your conditioning.) Your goal should be to stay somewhere between comfortable talking and not being able to talk at all. If you can sing or chat about last night’s Superbowl ads, then you’re not working hard enough. If you’re unable to get out a word and are gasping for air, you’re working too hard.
You can also check your pulse. Place two fingers lightly on the radial artery in your wrist or on the carotid artery in your neck. Count for ten seconds (you’ll need a stop watch or a watch with a second hand) and then multiply by six for your heart rate. Keep your feet moving while you count — your pulse slows quickly when you stop moving. Your heart rate should be somewhere between 50 and 85 percent of maximum, which is 220 minus your age. For example, if you’re 40, your maximum heart rate is 180. Your exercising rate should be between 90 and 153. This number may vary depending on your fitness level and general health. If you’re an elite athlete, your target heart rate may be higher, and if you take medications for high blood pressure, which may slow your heart rate, you should talk to your doctor. If you want to rely on target heart rate as a training method, talk to an exercise physiologist who can work with your specific parameters.
The most subjective method is the rate of perceived exertion. This is a scale from six to twenty, where six is the equivalent of sitting on the couch and twenty is like scaling Mt. Everest without an oxygen bottle. You should estimate your level of exertion based on factors like muscle fatigue, sweating, respiration rate, and heart rate. Ideally, your RPE should fall between twelve and fourteen, which is roughly the equivalent of 120-140 beats per minute and a moderate pace on the talk test.
It can be beneficial to keep a journal to track your training. Each day, jot down what kind of activity you did and then note your average RPE, heart rate, and talk test results. I also like to mention how I felt in general and keep track of my food and water intake. After a few weeks, you can start to see trends — how your RPE correlates with your heart rate, how that extra beer during the ball game affects your training the next day, or what happens if you don’t drink enough water. More importantly, you’ll start to see progress in your fitness level, something you don’t always notice on a day-to-day basis because the advances are incremental and small.
It’s fun to have a bunch of techie gadgets to monitor your progress, but you don’t really need them to know that you’re getting in good workouts and making progress toward your fitness goals.
Great article Marilyn!
Heart rate monitors are great. I use one with my Garmin Edge 305 when I’m doing road bike workouts. And I have a second heart rate monitor which I use with my Tech40 Trail Leader Pro when I’m doing run workouts.
I have exercise induced asthma, so the talking test doesn’t work for me, as soon as I start working out I start to sound like Darth Vadar’s wife – LOL!!! But the talking test works for the majority of the population.
I try to keep my heart rate in the 150-170 range when working out, but again, I’m not typical of most casual athletes. My HR has gotten as high as 190 on a few workouts, but I can’t keep that intensity for more than a minute or two.
Both my heart rate monitors can be used at the gym when I go to spinning class. The spin bikes automatically detect my HRM and work with the spin bike’s computer – cool!