Heart Rate Training is an effective tool for building both your cardiovascular capacity, your ability to train at higher levels of intensity, increase the effectiveness of energy usage and increasing your overall health.
Monitoring your heart rate to train in different heart rate zones is key to this technique. When in a periodization schedule, you follow a cyclic pattern of training in different zones to target each energy system.
In order to best utilize your training time when cycling indoors (commonly known as Spinning®), you need to know your heart rates, resting and maximum. With this information, you can derive your heart rate zones.
You maximum heart rate is genetically determined and does not truly fluctuate in adults that drastically. Only with increasing age and living a sedentary lifestyle will your maximum heart rate drop. But, since the max heart rate is unique to your body chemistry and composition, it is important to have it actually measure by putting your heart through stress. Since testing this way involves adding stress to your heart muscles, it is critical that you are fit and have your test supervised by a medical or licensed professional.
There are self-tests you can do that will give a pretty accurate reflection of your maximum heart rate, but again, this should be done in consultation with your doctor.
Finally, there are also some general age-predicted heart rate guides and calculations listed on the internet. While these may give you a sense of your maximum heart rate, they are highly variable and in my case were well under my tested maximum heart rate. In a pinch, this can start your fitness journey.
