Does anyone know how to gauge the percentage of effort expended in relationship to your HR? We had a set yesterday morning that got me thinking, and I am really having trouble wrapping my brain around this one. If your fastest time in the 100 free is 1:00, then what should 60%, 70%, 80%, 90% effort be (time wise?)? And also, since I know that your maximal HR should be (theoretically) 220 minus your age, at what HR are you going certain percentages of effort? I was swimming 5 x 100's on the 1:30 & going what I thought was about 60% effort and holding 1:16-1:18 - which was slower than I intended but the girl in front of me was going even slower, so I had to pull back - HR was about 110. Second set was to be of course, faster/harder (coach said 1st 5 HR 140ish, 2nd 5 HR 160ish - for the 15 yr olds) I held about 1:14's & my HR got near to 140, I think - but my effort felt closer to 80%. Gauging your effort is HARD! - thus I think if there was a nice little mathematical formula it would help! The only problem is, I KNOW that often an increase in effort often only results in a second or two drop/100. So, any genius's out there who can help me out?
The 220-age formula for heart rate is not terribly accurate, at least in my case. I do a lot of inline skating wearing a heart rate monitor and in the past three years, the highest reliable maximum heart rate I've observed has been about 155 bpm. I am 51, so that is a bit lower than the 220-age formula gives, but I am fairly confident that 155 is at least close to my maximum HR. My resting HR (just waking up in the morning, still in bed) was 47 the last I checked. So the formula I would use to compute the percentage of maximum HR is
(HR-47)/(155-47) x (100%).
Is that my percentage of maximum effort? Not sure about that.
So you need to figure out your maximum HR (MaxHR), your resting HR (RHR). and replace 155 with MaxHR and 47 with RHR in the formula above. I suppose you could use 220-age for MaxHR until you get a good handle on your actual MaxHR.
The 220-age formula for heart rate is not terribly accurate, at least in my case. I do a lot of inline skating wearing a heart rate monitor and in the past three years, the highest reliable maximum heart rate I've observed has been about 155 bpm. I am 51, so that is a bit lower than the 220-age formula gives, but I am fairly confident that 155 is at least close to my maximum HR. My resting HR (just waking up in the morning, still in bed) was 47 the last I checked. So the formula I would use to compute the percentage of maximum HR is
(HR-47)/(155-47) x (100%).
Is that my percentage of maximum effort? Not sure about that.
So you need to figure out your maximum HR (MaxHR), your resting HR (RHR). and replace 155 with MaxHR and 47 with RHR in the formula above. I suppose you could use 220-age for MaxHR until you get a good handle on your actual MaxHR.
