Extended 185+ heart rate

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Anyone do this during their workouts? 15+ minutes of 185+.
Side effects?

Curious if anyone is doing this, and how it's worked out for them. Seems like it's very different for everyone as to how far they can push it.... Noticed some professional strongmen athletes get over 240 bpm during certain events.
 

Ram94

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I do it, but not for any sustained length of time. My max HR is somewhere around 193 BPM and I only hit that range during sprint sessions of around 20 seconds with 2 minute rest periods. I would be very surprised if you could hold that level of exertion for much longer than 40 seconds or so. (Just a guess) I am usually sore for a day or two after sprints but feel like they do some good.
 

Hoodie

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240 bpm means those particular athletes have a much, much higher than average maximum heart rate. For reference the formula where you estimate MHR is 220-age. High max heart rate doesn't confer any athletic advantage or anything. Max heart rate just differs between individuals. It doesn't increase with training. What's relevant is the percentage of your max you can maintain for a certain time.

As for 185 sustained, that also depends on individual factors. My max heart rate is 191 (coincidentally that's exactly what the age formula says it should be, but the formula is not so accurate so it's best to test). My last anaerobic threshold test I got 178. Which is 93%. I test anaerobic threshold by measuring average heart rate over a 30 minute maximum sustained effort following a 20 minute warmup. Maintaining pace at 90+% of max heart rate for half an hour is hard. Anybody not doing high volume endurance training probably won't be able to do it.

Once your anaerobic threshold is 90% or more of max heart rate, improvements get real slow and marginal.

TL/DR: Lots of people wouldn't be able to sustain 185+ even if they wanted to. The only time I would go max sustained effort like that would be for a race type effort or an anaerobic threshold test.
 
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*zap*

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Sustaining a very high (max) heart rate for 15 minutes will be very debilitating. So, it will effect all your other workouts for a while....personally I do not think it would be worth it. On some strength sets I get up to 175 but that is just 30 seconds or so.....65 yoa. Never done a max heart rate test but I imagine it would be in the 170's by judging how I feel @ 175 after a short set of eight reps.....but that is a guess.
If your going to do this I would have a big chocolate bar 30 minutes before and maybe a cliff bar also.
 
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P Carter

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What would be the goal of doing this? As noted above, this would appear to be a race-type effort for a well trained athlete, so if used at all, it’d be quite sparse. If you’re training v02 max or have another purpose—for example, I could see trying to max out on heart rate for sport-specific training like boxing, I think we did this to maintain hand-head control under duress—I think you’d more often see it as interval training because you could spend more time near max heart rate without detrimentally affecting training afterwards.

Now, if you’re lacking fitness and arent trained up for it—and I fall into that category for sire—I wouldn’t see any real use for it, and in fact you’d probably hit 185 really quickly due to lack of aerobic fitness. But have at it if you want, I suppose!
 
OP
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So according to my HRM, I'm hoovering 187-192 for short bursts, but doing several of those bursts. About 30 seconds with 2 ¹/² minutes rest in between. Doing this for about 20 minutes twice a day, 7 days a week.
 

*zap*

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MY opinion of this is that you get more result from liss than hitt if you do your liss pretty much daily and for long durations......up to 90 minutes after working up to that. Occasional hitt is OK but not for a regular program, ymmv and jmo.

^especially if your training for hiking with low to moderate weight.
 
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First off l, I am not a doctor or an athlete. But I have a mountain bike loop I “race” myself on Strava regularly and have hit about 30 cumulative minutes of 180+ heart rate out of 50 minute ride. Not sure how it breaks down truly uninterrupted but a) that level of effort is very hard on the body and b) if your heart rate doesn’t drop quickly when you switch to a lower effort that’s a big red flag
 

Poltax

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I used to race Road Bikes when I was younger. We would have races were you would be close to max HR for a couple of minutes to 15 minutes, several times during a race. You can not sustain that type of activity every day. My training plan would be one day during the week in which I would do hill intervals or max pace line, of 5 to 10 minutes at AT Anaerobic Threshold, which is lower then your max HR. I usually planed those workouts mid week so I had plenty of time to recover if I was racing on the weekend.

Going hard everyday is not a very good plan. It does not help you build for what ever your goals are. You need plenty of rest in between hard efforts to see gains. Generally you need 2-3 days after AT training to allow your body to recover. Having said that, there are some exceptionally gifted athletes that can train at AT more often then I could.
 
OP
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First off l, I am not a doctor or an athlete. But I have a mountain bike loop I “race” myself on Strava regularly and have hit about 30 cumulative minutes of 180+ heart rate out of 50 minute ride. Not sure how it breaks down truly uninterrupted but a) that level of effort is very hard on the body and b) if your heart rate doesn’t drop quickly when you switch to a lower effort that’s a big red flag
It takes about 60-90 seconds to go from 190 to 70-80 I think, I'll check later today. I don't feel any long lasting sides though, but was just curious.
 

Brendan

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Absolute numbers are pretty irrelevant - it completely depends on your max heart rate, and the activity you're doing. Mine is right around 180 at 44 years old, at least that's the highest I've gotten it on any workout in the last several years. I'm not too far off being able to turn in a sub 6 minute mile either, so in pretty good shape.

I can probably keep mine at around 88% of max heart rate depending on the activity, running being easier to get my heart rate high. On the bike, heart rate that high isn't going to happen for me though unless it's a short all out sprint or FTP test. I'm doing a lot of structured power / FTP based training, and on a recent hard 60 minute workout near my FTP threshold, heart rate stayed in the low 140's. Legs give out before my heart rate becomes the issue.
 

*zap*

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To find max heart rate there is a specific test that you do. You need to be well rested and ready to go for the test.
 

LostArra

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I trained at 185 bpm all the time until I found out my thyroid gland was out of whack. I even sent a heart rate monitor back to the manufacturer because I thought it was faulty.
 
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