Heart Rate Zones

[Danny-r]

Hi guys, 

Just in the past week bought my Surge and I wondered if you could offer any advise in terms of the heart rate zones.  I'm aware that the calories are calculated based on times in different zones.

I'm after some advise about whether I should be adjusting them? I'd assume someone who, for example, has a resting HR of 80+ would need to increase them but I have a resting HR of 60-70 and sometimes 50-60 when in a situation such as laying down in bed. I'm active but not in great shape being 14st 7lb at 6ft although I'm in slightly better shape than those stats represent. An example of my daily targets is today, I was active and at this time today it's saying I have used 3, 821 calories of energy.

When lightly active, such as walking somewhere, I'm quite a fast walker and my heart rate hits 100+. I'm a football referee and during my match today. A time of 1:33:46 in total covering 4.7 miles and having an average HR of 141, although previously when officiating my HR has hit the 150's.

Whilst in the gym I've managed to get my heart rate up to 180+ when going all out on a treadmill.

So my question is this, do I adjust or stick with the standard zones of 100-139 Fat Burn, 140-169 Cardio and 170 peak.

I'm just really wanting to have an accurate as can be calorie outgoing and to be able to really have faith in what my FitBit is telling me. I don't want it to tell me I can eat so much, eat it and therefore not see any results.

An example of the stats it's given me for my match today is.

Time: 1:33:46

Average Pace: 19' 56"

Distance: 4.7 miles

Calories Burned: 1, 259 (12.7 cals/min)

Heart Rate: 38 minutes in fat burn and 55 minutes in cardio, 0 minutes in peak. Avg of 141.

The pace is quite high but as you can imagine the pace is never consistantly high when officiating. Involves a lot of high pace sprints rather than consistent high pace running.

To me that just doesn't seem realistic

[Colinm39]

@Danny-r Welcome.. I stand to be corrected on this, but in my testing, all the Manual HR Zones give you is a range check for your HR and it has nothing to do with calorie burn, that is controlled by the Automatic default HR Zones. So to answer your question it will make no difference. Others have changed their age to try and adjust those settings.. of course with other BMR ramifications.

I was hoping the manual Zones would help me because, at my age my minimum is 72 bpm and I get an artificial calorie burn for the spikes in HR. I'm the same weight as you and a RHR of 58 and down to 47 when asleep (generic).

Custom heart rate zones
Instead of using the default heart rate zones you can configure a custom heart rate zone.
When your heart rate is above or below your custom zone you’ll see an outline of a heart, and when your heart rate  is  in your custom zone you’ll see a solid heart.

A question

I'm interested to know how your SmartTrack is detecting your efforts. ?

Colin

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@Danny-r wrote:

Hi guys, 

Just in the past week bought my Surge and I wondered if you could offer any advise in terms of the heart rate zones.  I'm aware that the calories are calculated based on times in different zones.

I'm after some advise about whether I should be adjusting them? I'd assume someone who, for example, has a resting HR of 80+ would need to increase them but I have a resting HR of 60-70 and sometimes 50-60 when in a situation such as laying down in bed. I'm active but not in great shape being 14st 7lb at 6ft although I'm in slightly better shape than those stats represent. An example of my daily targets is today, I was active and at this time today it's saying I have used 3, 821 calories of energy.

When lightly active, such as walking somewhere, I'm quite a fast walker and my heart rate hits 100+. I'm a football referee and during my match today. A time of 1:33:46 in total covering 4.7 miles and having an average HR of 141, although previously when officiating my HR has hit the 150's.

Whilst in the gym I've managed to get my heart rate up to 180+ when going all out on a treadmill.

So my question is this, do I adjust or stick with the standard zones of 100-139 Fat Burn, 140-169 Cardio and 170 peak.

I'm just really wanting to have an accurate as can be calorie outgoing and to be able to really have faith in what my FitBit is telling me. I don't want it to tell me I can eat so much, eat it and therefore not see any results.

An example of the stats it's given me for my match today is.

Time: 1:33:46

Average Pace: 19' 56"

Distance: 4.7 miles

Calories Burned: 1, 259 (12.7 cals/min)

Heart Rate: 38 minutes in fat burn and 55 minutes in cardio, 0 minutes in peak. Avg of 141.

The pace is quite high but as you can imagine the pace is never consistantly high when officiating. Involves a lot of high pace sprints rather than consistent high pace running.

To me that just doesn't seem realistic

---

[Danny-r]

I'm using free run with GPS to track me when I'm officiating since that is essentially what I am doing. As an exercise, forgetting all the actual officiating, it's just running. The GPS is handy for an evaluation of the efforts I've put in during the game. I can look at it and see I stuck too central for example.

[SunsetRunner]

I just got a new Surge on Sunday, and so tried the HR compared with my Polar HR monitor. The Surge was always 5-10 BPM out compared to the HRM. This was my first outing with it, and only lifting weights, so I'll try with other exercises to see what the difference is, and see if I get better results.

However, if you want really accurate HR readings for training purposes, then use a HRM (i.e. with a chest strap). Everything else will only be an approximation, I believe.

Also, my HRmax is relatively high for my age, and so the default HR zones on the Surge are rather meaningless for me anyway.