Wattsup

First forum post is a winner!

Cougrrcj

The best heart rate is anything above zero. Optimum heart rate, - well, that's another story...

That said. my resting HR is <60, and rarely goes above 120. Riding my bike at 18mph - about 85. Yet I am a 60-yr-old borderline 'Clyde' with a cholesterol (without meds) of 174. You figure it out.
Everybody is different.
Read my first sentence again.

BlazingPedals

From BerkeleyWellness.com:

"The length of time it takes for heart rate to return to normal is a good measure of fitness. The more fit you are, the faster the recovery.

Your heart rate drops most sharply in the first minute after you stop exercising; it should then fall about 20 beats a minute—a drop of less than 12 beats a minute is considered abnormal. This “recovery heart rate” is measured as part of an exercise stress test."

Doge

Those rabid are infected with rabies. Scorpions are excluded.

bikingbill

Or old and fit (and a mutant). Normally my resting is in the 40's but sometimes ...

balut bandit

WHOOOOSH! (that's the sound of something flying over your head.)

livedarklions

Now do rabbits with scabies.

livedarklions

The more I read about this topic, the more convinced I am that most people use HR because it's easy to measure, not because it's particularly useful. Apparently, studies show that people do about as well estimating how hard they're working when they aren't monitoring as when they are.

I can see getting obsessive about this if you have a heart condition or a family history of it, but in my case, I don't think I'd be doing anything different if I started monitoring it. If you feel like you've done a vigorous cardiac workout, you almost certainly have.

BTW, one of the problems with having too much data is the temptation to compare your numbers with other people's. I agree with the other posters that that's particularly silly in this case.

Happy Feet

That's true for me.

I've never monitored my HR and couldn't tell you what my max was. I play with my smartphone app to see what my resting HR is but that's just for fun.

When doing an athletic activity I rely more on my respiration rate and perceived work of breathing (WOB). I'm a low tech geek

wphamilton

I came across something very interesting about heart rate recovery (HRR), that may completely change how you look at it. For background, HHR is how fast your heart rate drops back to normal after being elevated by hard exercise.

It turns out that if you check your heart rate after ONE minute, the drop is strongly correlated with age. The amount of recovery is higher when you're older, but not necessarily higher when you're more fit. But the rate of HR decline at THREE minutes is NOT correlated with age and IS correlated with VO2max, or one measure of aerobic capacity (fitness roughly speaking).

So, if like I was, you've been casually looking at the drop in heart rate for a minute, it's not really telling you anything meaningful. Wait 2 or 3 minutes and then check what the rate of decline is.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26147945

Leebo

Best heart rate? Anything above zero. Varies on age, conditioning, weight and wheel size,

Qwertyportne

Doge

I did not see age other than "adolescent (group Y) and adult athletes (≥18 years; group A)."
Is there more? There is so little data for under 18. I don't know there is any correlation if those are the two groups.

I VO2 tested my kid at 11 and 15/16 and in both cases the labs had nothing to compare to. He also responded completely unpredictably @15/16 and the test was terminated. He reached VO2 max and power kept going up. The machines timed out. Later subjective observations lead me to believe that things like lactic acid handling, beat root (NO2) skew these lab tests way off for kids. There is no "pro sport" for kids, but what I have seen leads me to believe they are superior in lab test duration than pros. Lab was Horner's home lab. In the USA swimming where we have kids compete at the top levels in adolescence we don't think it weird a 16 year old (girl) or 18 year old male can be the fastest in the world. But swimmers don't swim 5 -8 hours a race and do that 23 days. I think we (I have) would see similar results in cycling - for those duration's (<20 min). Kids are the fastest, strongest and highest VO2 - we just gear limit them, and the pool is small. Pro cyclists do multiple hours and days. That is not a lab test.
For turning big lab numbers - HR, VO2, W/Kg I'd put my bets on elite juniors (although the pool is small) over an adult pro in cycling.0

wphamilton

I'm relaying what the synopsis said, I haven't seen the data. They claimed that the 1-minute heart rate recovery correlated positively with age, and the 3 minute heart rate recovery correlated with vo2max but not age.

I've tried to check that twice on the treadmill, but my recovery was about 40-45 beats in the first minute, and by the 3rd minute it's at normal walking around pace, so doesn't drop much since I'm walking, so it doesn't verify well for me. Unless my "positive correlation" with age takes up most of the recovery, because I'm too old for this.

Interesting, but do you have the HRR1, HHR2 and HHR3 numbers?

Rajflyboy

Doge

No. I would measure spring vs late fall drops from peak to recover in slope and troughs.

Did do regular morning resting HR and warm-up HR. Typically just notice graphs and trends.

Measured thousands of times from rides, and some from labs (video below), blood panels etc. I just got used to what I saw. Max HR is about the same now 8 years later. That 220 - age is a rule of thumb, but in long time elite athletes (coach and wife) it is far off.


https://vimeo.com/manage/129016136/general

aclass

If the 220-age is a conjecture, then how does one go about determining their individual Max HR?

MoAlpha

The average ages in the two groups of athletes were 16·3 ± 0·8 and 21·9 ± 3·8, so the difference in recovery is what one would call "developmental," rather than relevant to the age spectrum. The implication of the article is that this has something to do with the maturation of the sympathetic nervous system, which is "turned back on" during recovery. There is also a significant confound in that the two groups differered significantly, not only in age, but in years of training. Finally, it's not clear whether the study had the statistical power to detect group differences in recovery at three time intervals and I saw no mention of a formal group x time overall interaction on a quick skim, so the HRR1 point could be a fluke. If the paper is paywalled, I'm happy to send it in response to a PM.

burnthesheep

wphamilton

I'd be more cautious about interpolating the results to older, non-elite athletes than about a possible confounding factor of total years of training, since the adult athletes ranged from 18 to 25.7 years old. That's more than just a developmental range though.

Doge

For track, you are not allowed a power meter. I think that 440W is a guess, although there may have been an embedded meter for recording, but I see know reason they'd add the weight for a final event when he would no longer be training. So I expect we don't know that is 440W, but if you have a source, I'd like to see it.
You can have a PM for the ITT and Wiggans said (now I have to find the source) before the ITT he thought he could win if he could hold 485W. He won, we did not see his power. Michal Kwiathkowski (sp?) did have a PM for his RR win, and he published it.


Ramblings...*
The Kona bike record back to back was set with out a PM and our USA best TTer does not use one.
In short distances/max power/sprints those killer hour/4 hour numbers mean less as things like the Kona TT are unique to the Ironman. I have tremendous respect for that rider in particular, but it is hardly the cycling sport thing. It is demonstrating what the human can do - without a PM for 4 hours. That is effort is way below VO2max and does not mean so much. Other riders can put out a degree of anaerobic power for a long time - meaning VO2, and HR (thread topic) does not mean much for practical non TT riding. One American, who was Hinault's teammate* had a great breakaway - was going to win Paris Roubaix until his flat, told me his VO2 max was 65 and you needed above 60 to race the TdF, again, with those distances the VO2 max and HR max don't mean much.

Where does VO2 max seem to matter? I think/guess 20~60 min. I see rowers go over all kinds of limits and keep going in the <10 min range. The fastest <20min cyclist we don't know, but I suspect they are kids, and maybe at the track - small pool. There was a 17 year old WC a few years ago, forget his name. VO2 max it supposed to peak in 18 year old males. This jives with swimming. In well muscled cyclist we can see max speed then, but cycling being a type of resistance (more than swimming) sport, the best average muscle, technique and every so slightly declining VO2 best combo likely come in low/mid 20s. We see the TdF winners later when VO2max and HR are not quite as big a deal as the ability to endure. That may be mostly brain. With the PED use, it is hard to tell. Wiggans was a user (legal) Froome a user (legal) on and on, but it is hard to tell what the natural rider could do.


*I try to avoid names as everything on this site is searched and indexed. I am not giving secret info, just didn't want Doge coming up with their name search.

Doge

As you mention, this could be as much training. This is another case where I think the data is factual, but there are too many other things to mean anything. I don't think you can get a study of 16 year olds with 3 years of training behind them. Maybe in soccer, or xcountry, not in cycling.
Compare 18 year old to 25, to 35, to 50 to 60 - but that costs too much.
I meet few in their 50+ who have trained all their lives. I know a handful who have, but most go at it about 10 years or so, then turn to rec having a good time. Around SoCal top TT times are by the <18, and 45 year olds. That does not mean the 20-35s could not be faster, rather they are busy - or pros in Europe. Getting good data sets using cycling is going to be difficult.

MoAlpha

Goes without saying, but the confound does prevent a clear imputation to simple age.

Semantically, if it's not age-related in the sense of senescence, it's developmental, but I don't think there's any fundamental disagreement here.

wphamilton

It occurs to me that there is also a hidden selection bias, in that the older age group, 18-26, who are still national and international class elites are likely more specialized and successful than the corresponding younger age group. In other words, many of the <18 elites might not become older professional elites and that may be in part due to the HRR1 differences, rather than vice versa.

Still, I think something is going on with this and, from looking around the interwebs I'm not very satisfied with the "conventional" explanations of HRR1 as a "heart health" indicator and HRR2 as "fitness" indicator. Apparently also, age (including advanced age) is NOT correlated with abnormal HRR1, meaning abnormally low recovery rates. We do need some more data.

MoAlpha