alanknm

Yeah. Once when I was x-country skiing and trying to blast up a steep hill. My MHR is somewhere around 185. I hit 189 while climbing that hill. By the time I got to the top I felt like something the dog dragged in.

DnvrFox

Not to quibble, but your MHR is your MHR, meaning if you got to 189, thats is now your MHR. Whatever you get to at that age is your MHR, as I understand things.

alanknm

Good point

Road Fan

You don't figure it, except as a bald estimate. You measure it if you really want to know it. Google "maxhr testing" if you want to see some methods for testing it. If you're at the library, take out "Cycling Past 50" or any other cycling book by Joe Friel.

Road Fan

Exactly right! This is why the formulas are crap. Next question is whether it is healthy to ride at your maxhr, or whether it's actually useful in setting up a training program. Read Friel.

cbresciani

I think this method is pretty close. I ran a half marathon in January and hit a MHR of 179, and yeah that was probably true. Then just the other day I went for a bike ride and on a pretty good push hit a MHR of 181. I did have a stress test done before I started my training at a Heart Specialist and using the 220-age method ended up completing the test with flying colors. I ended up at the max slope, speed and time on their treadmill for my calculated MHR. The Doctor said that I wasn't really close to what he expected my actual MHR to be. So I think the 208 - (Age X 0.7) is pretty accurate.

LAriverRat

11:12 am 41 bpm, 11:14 am 37 bpm? WTF? Had to start moving around more to get it up to 51. Now 53 bpm at 1:22 pm. Been off the bike for 9 days. I quess this means that my max rate has to be higher than I thought.

nkfrench 

I had a maximal stress test 18 years ago. They told me 187.
My training route has a hill where I'll crest at 187 if conditions are right. Warmed up, properly fueled, hot weather. At MHR its a little scary heading towards a 33mph downhill. I'm at the edge of control, lightheaded and winded.
Formulas aren't even close to predicting MHR.

138 seems pretty low. Is it possible that some breathing problems or exercise asthma are happening instead? Low blood sugar?

alcanoe

Heart rate does not appreciably decrease with age at least for the fit. My has been 172/174 for the 12 years or so that I've owned a HRM. My running/sprinting max is 191. Put that into a formula (there are about 5 of them out there ) and see how irrelevant they are for age 72.

Whether it's healthy to get your HR to max or not on a regular basis may not be known. Some coaches that post on-line don't think so. I've never found anything from the medical types.

It is healthy and otherwise beneficial to get you heart rate up to roughly lactate threshold which is somewhere between 80 and 90% of measured HRmax. The actual value is a function of fitness. I try to spend time there (over 85%) weekly. Not only does it keep your cardiovascular system in good shape, generate a large amount of human growth hormones (anti-ageing properties), but the training affect allows you to generate more power at lower heart rates. A big and very noticeable benefit for climbing steep singletrack at 72.

Of course if one is not at a decent level of fitness, getting your heart rate up there can be dangerous. For one thing, strenuous exercise thickens the blood and the body takes time to adapt to that. Unfortunately, even a stress electrocardiogram (on a treadmill) is unreliable to determine adequate fitness, so there is always some risk.

You won't in general get much encouragement from you doctor either unless he happens to study exercise physiology on his own. About 7 or 8 years ago I had to get a new doctor as my previous one, who was a runner and had worked with Dr. Kenneth Cooper who's books started the running/aerobics craze back in the 1970s, had to retire.

My new doctor told me I was killing my self with my high heart rate activity: I'll spend like an hour of a two-hour ride above 80% sometimes. I brought in some of the college level physiology texts which I read as a hobby and showed him the data. He apparently ordered some as he'd write down the names and ask where I got them. Over several years he ran all kinds of tests on me including sonograms of my heart.

Finally, all that culminated a few years ago when he asked me to scope out a jogging program for him which I did. He worked up to the speed-walking level and developed angina. He waited too long. But, if he had not stressed himself, he may not know about the partial artery blockage until too late.

Al

OldsCOOL

Let's go sprint some rolling hills. I'm right behind you.

OldsCOOL

I frequently (throughout the season) hit the 186 mark. Without a monitor it's really easy to tell......when I cant catch my breath. No light-headedness, just breathing hard with a big smile on my face.

billydonn

"Starting around age 20, VO2 max begins to go down, partly because maximum heart rate, which hits a peak of about 200 beats per minute at age 20, drops by .6 beats per minute each year. This means a drop of 6 beats per minute every decade, so that by age 50 maximum heart rate will have declined 18 beats per minute. This is true for people who remain moderately active in endurance activity, but the rate is more likely 1 beat per year in couch potatoes, scientists say."

J. Friel, Cyling Past 50, p. 5

Road Fan

I kinda feel like an idiot or pedant (either shoe fits, I guess) for pointing this out, but if you HR exceeds what you think is your MHR, then that wasn't your MHR. It means the largest of the two numbers is your new best-estimate of your true MHR, and that you should probably adjust your training zones accordingly if you're using HR.

Road Fan

I think I give Joe Friel more credence than a 50+ thread, actually. In any case, I've read this book, and clearly at least one of the experts does not confirm the "constant MHR" clain.

nkfrench 

I'm pretty sure my MHR was faster than 187 when I was 20 years old.

I'm not claiming a constant MHR. My point was my heart currently probably won't go any faster than old stress test results and what my HRM is recording now.

A maximal stress test in a lab is still just a single data point. It should be a very good estimate. Since I didn't actually pass out, have arrhythmia or croak, we'll never know for sure if I could have gotten my heart rate a few beats higher. I sure felt like I gave my all.

I have Joe Friel's Cycling Past 50 book, it is a good source of info.

chinarider

May be semantics. In my book, MHR is the max you can get to under optimum conditions with extreme motivation. It is a physiological limit. Unless you're in pretty good shape, you probably won't get there.

chinarider

For you. You can pick a formula virtually at random and it will work for someone. At best, any formula shows an average. Some are more accurate for this than others, but it is still an average with wide deviations.

chinarider

I think the .6 per year is an average. Probably a more accurate an average than 1 per year, but still an average with wide variations

billydonn

Here we go again!

Wogster

More then an average, it's probably a generality, generally when a writer puts a number "out there", without a qualifier, it's a generality.

UADave

Alcanoe, I've never heard that about HGH increasing. That's interesting. I need to research this. My max hr is 185 as determined by my doctor with a stress test. That's higher than the formulas say but I've hit it a lot and never exceeded it since I got a monitor last Christmas. I have a friend a year older than me, he's 54, who hit 193 on a stress test. That's way off any method I've ever seen and I wonder if he misunderstood what his doctor said.

chinarider

I don't think it's all that unusual. I'm 59 any my mhr is around that.

alcanoe

Little late on a response, but I was triggered to do so by a book I just got in: Pruitt's Complete Medical Guide for Cyclists.

There is no doubt that HRmax has to decrease some with age. The issue to me is that it doesn't decrease much and any simple rule or formula can't work due to many things not the least is genetic diversity.

My reading indicates that the decrease in VO2max is mostly driven by a reduction in blood pumped per heart beat/stroke and not HRmax. That must mean a weakening of muscle as the heart is a muscle.

I don't believe either the age 20 or the 200. I run 190/191 sprinting. Working back to age 20 and using 0.6/year I get (72-20)X0.6+191 = 221. Does the exception prove the rule? Maybe, but I doubt it.

An acquaintance has 190 for sprinting and he's 52. That genetic diversity.

I would argue that VO2max likely decreases at age 40 vice 20. There's a curve in Bicycle Physics third edition that shows 40km (?, I think it's 40, I don't have the book with me, but it's really long) time trial times are flat to age 40 then decreases after that. Also, the TT for the last Tour for example had the old guys beating out the young guys which is not unusual in cycling at least. Of course, there are other things that migh affect TT times, but to me it brings into question the "20" for cycling.

Then in Pruitt's book, in the chapter on ageing he states (paraphrasing): people who are sedentary loose VO2max after 40 and intense training can slow the loss of VO2max to less than 5% per decade. Another comment was that a few study subjects were able to maintain and even increase their VO2max into their seventh decade in life. Genetics again?

There are no reverences for these statements, so I have no idea as to scientific rigor, but fascinating stuff none the less. It also jives with other of my readings except that last statement.

Bottom line to me is what matters is that ageing is not that big a liability if you keep a positive attitude and a decent training program which should include some high hart rate time time and that's where the monitor comes in. Using it to limit HR is the wrong approach unless building up after a hiatus or a medical condition. Though there was an article no too long ago in the NYT where they were taking post heart attack patients to around 80% as I remember and not very long after the attack. Scary.

Al