UNDERSTANDING THE TRAINING ZONE

Heart Zone Training

You can determine your max heart rate by subtracting you subtract your age from 220 (man) and 226(women). For instance, if you are 42 years old, your predicted max heart rate would be 184 beats per minute. Once you have determined your max heart rate, you will need to decide what zone you want to train in. There are five different training zones separated by 10% increments, each one having different characteristics and benefits.

Healthy Heart Zone

The first of five zones is called the healthy heart zone. This is 50-60% of your max heart rate. This is the easiest and most comfortable zone within which to train and is the best one for people who are just starting a fitness program or have low functional capacity. Those of you, who do a lot of walking, most likely train at this zone. This zone actually helps to decrease the risk of degenerative diseases and has a low risk of injury. In this zone, 10% of carbohydrates are used as energy, 5% of protein is burned, and a whopping 85% of fat is burned.

Fitness Zone

The next zone is the fitness zone, which is 60-70% of your max heart rate. Once again, 85% of your calories burned in this zone are fats, 5% are proteins, and 10% are carbohydrates. Studies have shown that being in this zone can condition your fat mobilization while also conditioning your fat transportation. In this zone, you are training your fat cells to increase the rate of fat release and training your muscles to burn fat. Therefore, the benefits of this zone are not only the same as the healthy heart zone training, but you are now slightly increasing the total number of calories burned and providing a little more cardio respiratory benefits. Simply because it is more intense, you burn more total calories in this zone.

Aerobic Zone

The third zone, the aerobic zone, requires that you train at 70-80% of your max heart rate. This is the preferred zone if you are training for any type of endurance event. In this zone, your functional capacity will greatly improve and you can expect to increase the number and size of blood vessels, increase total vital capacity and respiratory rate and achieve increases in pulmonary ventilation. Stroke volume will increase while your resting heart rate will decrease. This means that you're cardiovascular and respiratory system will improve and you will increase the size and strength of your heart. In this zone, 50% of calories burned are from carbohydrates, 50% are from fat, and less than 1% are from protein. Because there is an increase in intensity, there is also an increase in the total number of calories that are burned.

Anaerobic Zone

The fourth training zone is called the threshold or anaerobic zone, which is 80-90% of your max heart rate. Benefits of this zone include an improved V02 maximum and thus an improved cardiovascular respiratory system, and a higher lactate tolerance ability which means your endurance will improve and you will be able to fight fatigue a lot better. Since the intensity is high, more calories will be burned than within the other three zones. Although more calories are burned in this zone, 85% of the calories burned are from carbohydrates, 15% from fat, and less than 1% are from protein.

Red Zone

The last training zone of the five is called the red zone, which is 90-100% of your max heart rate. Training at 100% is your maximum heart rate; your heart rate will not go any higher. This zone burns the highest total number of calories and the lowest percentage of fat calories. Ninety percent of the calories that are burned here are carbohydrates, only 10% are fats and less than 1% are protein. This zone is so intense that very few people actually stay in this zone for the minimum 20 minutes, or even 5 minutes. Usually, people will use this zone for interval training. For example, one might do three minutes in the aerobic zone, then one minutes in this zone, then go back to the aerobic zone.