Low Heart-Rate Training: All You Need to Know

Heart-rate training could easily be one of the most confusing aspects of any athlete’s workout routine. However, once you’ve got your data as well as knowledge of what to do with the data, it is a relatively easy way to elevate your performance.

Quite a number of people support and canvass for HIIT training alongside hard intervals with a mindset that a quality session should involve pushing yourself to limits. However, there are several perks that lower heart training offers that would reflect in your performance.

Provided your goal is to build a body that is injury-proof and enjoy a lengthy and successful career as an athlete, then getting rid of the “Go hard or go home” mentality is essential.

The human body is designed to typically recover from stress within a particular time period, however, continuously stressing your body gives it little or no time to recover.

After a while, you would experience a breakdown either in the form of sickness or injury.

Therefore, one of the most effective ways of building the body and guaranteeing movement efficiency is to work on lowering your heart rate.

This invariably provides for a body that would move better and boast of a higher level of fitness. When your movement patterns improve, this would translate to a significant improvement in your submaximal performances.

How Does Low Heart-Rate Training Work?

In order to lower the intensity of your heart rate, a very efficient way is to use the concept of Maximal Aerobic Function (MAF) which was developed by Dr. Phil Maffetone.

This would show the maximum heart rate at which you typically train for extended time periods. The formula is simply 180 – your age in years. For instance, if you’re 30, then it would be 180 – 30 = 150bpm.

If you begin to train at this pace, you might initially notice your pace drop compared to your normal race pace over the same distance and time duration.

However, when your body begins to adjust, you would notice an improvement in the pattern of your movements with your speed increasing at this same heart rate.

Also, within a short time period, you would find yourself effectively performing better with identical output effort. One of the major perks of low-heart rate training is that you do not experience very serious pains or feel sore after training.

This is because you would remain within the limits that your body basically demands. Also, you would require from stress a lot quicker and be able to take up a better improved total training load.

What Are the Benefits of Low-Heart Rate Training?

One of the main benefits of heart rate training generally is helping new athletes have a feel of what comprises various intensities according to Tawnee Prazak who is a coach, athlete and the host of the podcast, Endurance Planet.

He says that athletes need to understand what real recovery actually feels like including tempo, aerobic zones, max effort, and threshold.

Low Heart Rate training is effective at helping to boost aerobic capacity to the maximum potential possible, without the inclusion of the strain borne of overtraining.

The low heart rate-based training helps in building your aerobic system without placing too much stress on your muscular and skeletal systems. This implies that unlike the general school of thought that advocates “no pain, no gain,” you can improve significantly without experiencing so much pain.

Similarly, you can achieve great results without going as hard as you possibly can. Low heart-rate training helps to reduce the risk of overtraining and fatigue as well as guaranteeing your speedy recovery.

Your heart rate training is an effective guide to prevent you from going at an extremely hard pace during recovery runs or easy runs. When you recover very fast, your legs would be fresh and raring to go for your next race or for the very next hard session.

Tracking your effort is another parameter that you can easily determine especially during interval sessions when you may choose to work at a higher intensity.

Your heart rate training would come in very handy in moderating how much effect that factors like humidity and heat would have on you. These factors typically require more effort on the part of your heart, thereby resulting in an increased heart rate.

Also, tempo-runs are another aspect where your low heart rate training would come in very handy. Since getting your exertion level correctly is essential for gaining maximum benefit from the workout, this training would help with that.

In order to confirm that you are indeed on the right track, monitoring your heart rate with an effective fitness tracker is vital. This way you can note your progress.

Also, recall that you might not get your desired changes automatically. Putting in the time and running your miles slower can bring about some very impressive results.

Furthermore, this training basically involves you slowing down your speed, so you might be tempted at a point to go back to your regular pace. You really shouldn’t do that, this process is very gradual and requires slow and steady before you pick up the pace. Don’t skip the slow and steady!