Karvonen formula

Charlie_Francis · January 22, 2009, 6:29pm

I once worked with two Olympic athletes (both medalists) who checked heart rates during workouts. One would be easily 200+ and the other would be around 140-145, for the same workout at the same time. The latter maxed out below where the former was for threshold (AT, LT, OBLA, whatever floats your boat).

I don’t touch anything that has anything to do with generalized estimates of max. heart rates or threshold or training zones or anything like that.

Actually, I don’t think I’ve had an athlete check their heart rate in 10 years. We either go all out or pretty easy, and we don’t need to know the heart rate for either one.

My advice is, if you do want to use heart rates, test for max., and go from there. If you care, and can do it, test for AT/LT/OBLA. But I’ve seen way too many people that don’t fit the formulas. And if you care about heart rates, hitting the wrong ones doesn’t help you.

That was my experience as well.