Originally Posted by
surak
Saying the HRM is needed when one has a PM is a stretch. There's no need for heartrate in widely used fitness measures like a PMC and its associated metrics, which are plenty for a regular amateur athlete to rely on for training.
Once I incorporated power, HR became a vestigial organ. Sure, HR has uses, but on-bike they're pretty niche for typical training. With power being an objective measurement, HR isn't any more useful to me than RPE.
And I'm not the only one with no use for a HRM. A friend trained solely with power to become multiple state TT champ in his age group.
I’m not a student of training programs, and am only vaguely familiar with even the big players, like Coggan, Allen, Friel and Seiler, all of whom recognize HR monitoring for evaluating the body’s response to training. I’m unaware of any program which totally ignores HR, but maybe that’s because I’ve never looked. When I started power-based training in ‘10, my coach used both and it made sense to me since I’d been using HR for some years already.