Please help with the understanding of heart rate.

Question
Hello,

can you please tell me what my target heart rate should be when doing cardio for fat loss.  I am a 32 year old male 6 ft about 195lbs.  I do cardio about 3 times a week for 60 mins. I think it should be 141 to 153 at a level of 60 to 70 percent of your maximum heart rate.  I don't understand what this means?   Are they saying to have my heart rate around 147 bpm for 65% of the work out.  So in a 60 min workout it should be at this number for at least 45 min of the workout?

Answer
A heart rate range should be in that range for the total duration of your workout, once you get it up there after starting.  It is not for a % of the workout time, it is for a % of your maximum heart rate.

I no longer prescribe or go by the heart rate monitoring methods any more, mainly due to the science of it all having changed greatly within the last 10 years.  Numerous formulas come & go it seems, and frankly, the other things I've discovered is that fitness levels improve best when you judge efforts on your own, on a simple 1-10 scale of effort.  Studies have shown that these self-figured exercise exertion ratings correlate well with the heart rate zones that one should 'be in'.  Also, I got tired as a professional of constantly explaining the concepts of heart rate formulas, because it seemed every time I was asked something new about it, I had to debunk the old formula and explain the new one.  I also discovered that most people's zones were mis-figured, and their perceived levels of exertion were different from what their heart rate zones said they should be in.  In your example, if someone was to be at 147 bpm, they might feel that at that level, its too easy of a workout.  

I'm also taking on more of a concept of supra-maximal efforts done in an interval fashion between high efforts & low efforts.  This concept is called high intensity interval training, and has been used for years by athletes, and more recently in the last 5-10 years, it is gaining notoriety within the fitness realm for fat loss goals.  Essentially, the old methods of working within a 'zone' of effort based on a 'limit' that is determined by only one's age and a number that's plucked out of some other formula we never knew (the 220 minus your age formula for maximum heart rate), this method is proving to be a poor method to use for long term fitness gains.  Even using resting heart rate numbers in the formula can vary things greatly, since resting heart rates can vary on a daily basis due to life's different demands placed upon the body.  No one wants to reconfigure a heart rate zone every single day either based on a resting heart rate.  Basically what I'm saying here is that the heart rate zones are becoming a thing of the past, and going by effort ratings alone within each workout is a better marker of your fitness levels and how your body adjusts to it.  For a further reading of my thoughts on interval training, read my free guide, The Mini-Max Method, at http://speeddialcoach.com/minimax.pdf

Rick Karboviak