Why Longer Periods Of Moderate Intensity Pave The Way To Greater Fitness: Why You Need A Heart Rate Monitor

Most of the great professional cycling teams like Garmin-Cervelo and Radioshack are holding their first training camps of the season in preparation for the Tour Down Under in January. In the early season most cyclists and marathoners take a protracted period of longer steady rides at lower intensity to build up their fitness base.

The reason most world-class athletes train at these intensities is to both develop the cardiovascular system and to reach a more ideal level of fitness and weight before beginning effort of a greater intensity and a heart rate monitor is the barometer that serves them for monitoring their intensity.

So, what can the average person who just wants to lose a few pounds, or get in better shape, take away from this? It pays to take a long period of time to establish a solid base of fitness before you “reach for the stars”. So often I see people come to the gym and they have not exercised for months and, in some cases, years. Their goal is often to get in shape or lose a few pounds and yet so many of them were brought up with the wrong concept of fitness, kind of like my military father, that pushing it to the limit is the only way to get in shape.

Actually, the opposite is true, and you want to restrain the intensity of your workouts until you have built a substantial base from which to work.

The first thing I try to help my clients do is define the level of intensity, break their program up into blocks of training, and get them a heart rate monitor. We then sit down and map out their training in blocks depending upon their desired goal. During each phase we are looking toward specific measurement of fitness improvement, percentage of body fat and other measurements to give us insight into how the program is progressing.

Know More About: Polar FT80

However, for the first 6 weeks of the program for a new client, unless they come to me in tremendous shape, we just exercise at 60% to 70% of max heart rate with the focus on aerobic improvement and lighter, low intensity weights to build a foundation. The heart rate monitor helps us build that foundation and, once it is in, then we work on building the house and the roof.

I hope you find these insights helpful and feel free to drop me a line if you have any questions.

Share on Facebook