Howdy. I can't fit my swims in with our local master's team, and I have been frustrated with planning organizing my workouts. Do any of you use a heart rate monitor, or your heart rate to help you plan/do your workout? What did you read? What are good water friendly devices? Thanks. Great swim to all and to all a good night....
Former Member
Thanks a lot. If it wouldn't be trouble I would be interested in the formula. Thanks for the response. Happy swimming.
I swim on my own and without a coach. I started using the workouts above. I especially like Mo Chambers workouts.
As for heart rate I do check mine every so often. I don't use a heart monitor but I just count my pulse for ten seconds and then times by 6. Their is a formula you can use that you can figure the intensisty of your workout. If you would like this I can look it up and post it for you.
I bought a Polar heart rate monitor about 2 months ago to help training. and it does help. instead of waitn g30 sec onds or whatever now I wait for my heart rate to hit a certain level and then I go. When I do my long sets it is neat to see what my levels are at and to download them and compare them to what they were a week ago...a month ago.
two things I like about it:
1-I know where I am at during training
2-For interval training I know when to start my sets.
Does that make sense? It makes training quantitatve.
Here is the formula that I found to figure out your intensity.
A. 220 - __________ = __________
(age) (MHR)
B. ________ - _________ = __________
(MHR) (RHR)
C. (_______ X 60)+ ________) -10 to 13 beats = ____________
(line B) (RHR) (60% intensity)
D. (_______X 80) + ________) - 10 to 13 beats = ___________
(line B) (RHR) (85% intensity)
E. Target heart rate range for swimming = ________ to _______
in beats per minute (line C) (line D)
MHR= predicted maximum heart rate
RHR= resting heart rate
If you have a pace clock you can follow you should be able to cut you use of your monitor as a certain pace you will find will correspond to a certain HR quite closely.
The 220 minus age should be used only as a rough guide as ther is quite a bit of variation. In particular a say 55 yr old man who is in very good shape usually has a maximum heart rate higher than calculated. The assumption of a decrease of one beat per minute per year probably does not apply in someone who trains regularly for years.
There are methods of calculating your personal maximum heart rate and if you are going to go to the trouble of using a heart rate monitor you probably should try to calculate your own max heart rate which will vary some from sport to sport.
