Procedures needed to use a heart rate monitor to enhance your training.

This post is a follow up to my introduction of the heart rate monitor in my previous post. In this post I will explain the procedures you can use to take advantage of the latest sports science and enhance your athletic development.

Firstly, let's look at how to use the handy little gadget to measure your resting heart rate (RHR). It's actually very simple...just connect up the chest strap 10 minutes after you have woken up. This is to ensure that no external factors, such as food digestion or exercise, can skew your score. Measure RHR over a 1 minute period using the Polar Beat app and form an average. It is really important to try to stay in a relaxed state whilst measuring.

Average resting heart rates are between 60-80bpm. However, an athletes RHR can go as low as the late 20's. My best score yet is 34bpm.

In general, a lower resting heart rate indicates a greater cardiovascular fitness. Therefore regular monitoring can help you to see how your fitness journey is progressing. Regular monitoring can also be useful to identify a state of over-training, or a lowered immune system response. A good indication of this is when your RHR changes by 10bpm within a short time frame.

So, now that you are fitting in with the crowd let's look at how to be a boss. Focus on using the heart rate monitor to "threshold train". Let me explain quickly what this is...The "metabolic threshold" (aka anaerobic threshold or lactate threshold) is the point at which the body's metabolism moves from working with a lot of oxygen to not a lot of oxygen. Once you have passed the threshold, your tank is rapidly on decline and you will have to stop relatively quickly. The good news is that you can improve the point at which you reach your threshold by training. One way to do this is threshold training. This involves you training at your threshold for an extended period of time to get your body used to working at that intensity. For example, if your reach your threshold at 170bpm, you will exercise to this intensity and maintain it.

I know I know, you want to know how to measure your threshold? Stay tuned to my blog where I reveal all and some more cool sport science hacks! In the meantime, why not try an ARDfitness session or book a ticket to see Me fight on March 12th.