You Gotta Have Heart!

The biggest training breakthrough in the last 20 years is training in "heart-rate zones", says Dr. Herman Falsetti, a cardiologist who offers fitness assessments and personalized training prescriptions through his Irvine, California, Health Corp. He hasd the eyes, and improved the training, of Tour de France champions, Olympians, and world-class triathletes.

"Training in heart-rate zones tells you exactly what exercise effort you need to accomplish what you want – improve your cardiovascular fitness, increase your speed and power, really burn fat. Fat, of course, is a concern to many people."

You can exercise haphazardly, says Falsetti, risking injury, burnout, boredom, and snail-like progress. Or you can get scientific and see results more quickly.

"It all boils down to knowing what you’re doing, monitoring your effort to get what you want," he says. "We’ve seen dramatic improvements – in weight loss and performance – once people start training scientifically."

Better still, you don’t need to be a scientist to accomplish this. All you need is a measure of your anaerobic Threshold and the ability to read a wristwatch. It does help to understand some of the science, and that isn’t very complicated either. Anaerobic threshold – AT for short – is the crux of scientific training.

There are formulas for determining AT – subtracting your agefrom 220 then multiplying that number by 0.85 is the most common one – and many people use them. Problem is, they are usually inaccurate, sometime wildly so. Without knowing your precise AT you will not get the most out of your training program.

Scientists define AT as the point where lactic acid begins accumulating in the blood faster than it can be broken down. Exercisers know it as the onset of meltdown, the familiar burn in muscle and lungs. Falsetti’s analogy is simpler still. AT is the redline on the tachometer of your individual engine, and it’s against this ceiling that effective exercise is measured. Know your AT, check your heart-rate (pulse rate for 6 seconds multiplied by 10) as you walk, run, bike, or swim, and keep your heart rate exactly where it needs to be to best burn fat, to strengthen your heart, or to build speed and power.

Heart-rate training neatly addresses another problem, one that has kept Americans recoiling from exercise for years. You don’t have to experience pain to get great fitness benefits. With heart-rate training you learn how to exercise smarter, not harder. Many a well-meaning exercise program begins inspired only to end when the exerciser is physically and mentally beat.

See "Exercise by the Numbers" chart:

Heart-rate training lets you work within your own tolerance levels and abilities. If your aim is just to lose fat and improve your cardiovascular fitness, you can stay in the first two lower-effort zones. Unless you’re competitive, there’s no reason to move up into the higher intensities.