Training & Nutrition - Finding Max HR w/o monitor?

I'd like to fin my max heartrate with a method a bit more accurate than 220 - my age. How could I do this? Taking my pulse on my bike is no problem...

It is pretty tough. Firstly, if your max heart rate is 180 for example, that is 30 beats within 10 sec. This is rather fast and could be inaccurate, and possibly you will lose count if you do the full 60 secs. I would recommend you get a HRM, maybe borrow it from someone. Also, Koffee would reccomend getting a test at a local university, since max HR is hard to determine. She would most probably recommend you to get a lactate threshold heart rate LTHR test. You can then use it to calculate the various intensity to workout at. I don't have time for such things, busy with school and everything and I think only the sports council offer such services.

Koffee Brown wrote an extensive article about finding max heart rate without going to a sports facility. You might do a search under maximum heart rate.

Originally posted by CarlJStoneham
I'd like to fin my max heartrate with a method a bit more accurate than 220 - my age.
In the book The Heart Rate Monitor Book for Outdoor and Indoor Cyclists, there is a formula to determine your max HR.

211.4 - (0.5 times your age) - (0.05 times your body weight in pounds) + 4.5 for men (add zero for women).

Using the old formula of 220-age I get 162. Yet I've ridden hard enough to get 168 on my HRM. :eek:

Using the new formula I get 176. ;)

Thanks for the tips!
As for determining my HR w/o a monitor, I change my cyclocomputer over to time elapsed and take my neck pulse for 6 seconds and then just add a zero to the end. It's not too hard since after about 30 minutes of riding, my pulse is so strong I could almost feel with my hands on the bar :p I do it several times in the space of a few minutes to try and average errors out.
I do intend to get an HRM, but I have other purchases higher up the list. That'll be a Christmas gift...

Originally posted by CarlJStoneham
Taking my pulse on my bike is no problem...

When you hit your MHR, you won’t be able to get acrobatic or to count or anything like that... :D

Remember that the MHR is not about a prolonged--however intense--effort (although that may take you closer to it), but about a brief peak of maximum effort.

That’s why I suck at finding out my own MHR (with a HRM)... Sometimes--especially when I really want to--I cannot reach the 220-minus-age rate. Sometimes--especially when I am having fun--I go over it without even falling off the bike.

Meanwhile, I use an average (close to 220-...) and set up my different training zones accordingly. Somehow I begin to sense that--the borders between--those zones are right: ‘intensive endurance’ (D2) indeed feels different from ‘endurance’ (D1).

I hope that Santa will not forget your HRM. It seems to me that you cannot do HR-based work-outs without one. What would then be the point of establishing your MHR anyhow?

Actually, I found a good HRM online. It should be here tomorrow or Monday, so the days of taking my pulse on the bike are over. Thanks for the suggestions.

According to that method my Max HR is 196.9 or 197 rounded. According the the Age way it's 195. pretty close.

Originally posted by CarlJStoneham
Actually, I found a good HRM online.
That's good. I was going to suggest that if you don't have an HRM, you really don't care about your MHR. Figure out your level of exertion from your breathing, how you feel, how long you can continue at that perceived effort, etc.

Even with the HRM, it's good to correlate the numbers to your personal fitness, etc. Case in point... my observed MHR is 181bpm (48 years old). My lactic threshold (based on AHR of the last 20 minutes of a 30 minute TT) is ~168bpm, or about 93% MHR. I can reasonably base my training levels on my lactic threshold, but not my MHR. But I do still use HR to determine which zone I'm in.

Confused yet? :confused:

Nope. I think I getcha! :D