Cardio & Heart Rate – would you lift weights without knowing the poundage?

Tech Makes It Easier to Achieve Your Cardio Training Goals

Tech makes it easier to achieve your cardio training goals.

I have been an enthusiastic user of heart-rate monitors since they first began appearing in the 1990s. The heart-rate monitor allowed athletes to determine how hard the heart was working in relation to the work being done. The use of a heart-rate monitor enabled an athlete, for the first time, to assign a numeric value to the intensity of the cardiovascular effort.

Intensity was the missing piece to the aerobic puzzle. Now, in addition to identifying mode, duration and frequency, the athlete could place a specific numerical value on intensity, difficulty, effort, and exertion. Once identified, intensity could be preplanned, checked in real time, and analyzed retroactively. As I have noted previously, doing aerobic exercise without knowing the intensity is akin to lifting a barbell without knowing the poundage.

Classical Resistance Training Periodization

In resistance training, everything is numeric: sets, reps, session duration, session frequency, poundage, amount of rest between sets, and so on. Because everything is numeric, resistance training lends itself to periodization, i.e., athletic preplanning. A classical periodized resistance-training cycle might consist of a 12-week macro-cycle with three 4-week micro-cycles tucked inside.

Periodization is the art and science of conjuring progress and then sustaining it for months on end. Periodization adherents typically use a 12-week training cycle designed to peak muscle and strength. The classic strategy is to begin the cycle 10% below capacity and seek to end the 12-week program above current capacities.

In a classical periodization scenario, one of our lifters, a 24-year-old with a 400-pound squat, sought a 450-pound squat in his upcoming competition. This would represent a fantastic 12.5% increase in 90 days. This type of strength increase required our 154-pound athlete to add muscle. At 154 pounds, with 25-inch thighs, he did not possess enough muscular firepower to accomplish the task.

The young athlete embraced this inconvenient truth and committed to moving up a weight class. He added 11 pounds of lean muscle mass in 90 days, roughly a pound per week, by combining a high-calorie, high-protein bodybuilder-style diet with power training and a complementary, consistent, no-stress lifestyle. He did not smoke or drink and was a clean eater.

We strength train one time a week. After 3 to 5 warm-up sets, our lifter would hit the targeted periodization goal for the week, the top set. One big set per week. That is it, insofar as squatting for the entire week. Hit the periodized goal for the week, move on to the next lift of the session, repeat until done, see you next week.

The first four weeks of the cycle were dedicated to 10- and 8-rep top sets. The lesser poundage enabled technical refinements and the establishment of full range of motion. The middle four weeks concentrated on 5-rep sets. This is where the real strength training began. The final four weeks utilized a repetition taper to peak size, strength, and performance.

Heart-Rate Periodization for Cardio

How can strength-training periodization protocols be adapted for aerobic exercise? How would an athlete set up an aerobic approach that replicates a strength-training periodized cycle? As always, four elements need to be identified: mode, duration, frequency and intensity.

There are two generalized types of cardiovascular exercise:

• Steady-state: attain and retain a steady pace for the duration of the session. Over time, and with practice, the steady-state pace is systematically increased.
• Burst: work hard, recover, then work hard again. Burst cardio is more intense and should be used with more caution.

A heart-rate monitor turns cardio from guesswork into data. The monitor enables the athlete to determine, in real time, whether the session is too easy, too hard, or exactly on target.

A 10-Week Cardio Intensity Cycle

Here is a simplified version of the 10-week cardio-periodization idea. This is an example, not a universal prescription. The point is the progression: duration, frequency, and intensity all move upward gradually.

Over the life of this 10-week, 70-day cycle, weekly sessions were systematically increased, session length increased, and intensity rose over time. In Marty’s example, the trainee dropped body fat and increased deadlift training poundage. Treat that as a case example, not a guaranteed result. The useful lesson is the process: quantify the work, start realistically and advance gradually.

Initially, the trainee’s newness to running limited him to trotting along. As he shaped up and acclimatized, his mild trotting morphed into serious, sweat-producing jog-running. Sessions were done in the early morning to take advantage of the fasted-cardio effect. Fasted cardio is a tactic, not magic, and it is not appropriate for everyone.

Using Heart-Rate Data in Real Time

As the cardio session unfolds, our business executive’s goal was to stay near, at or slightly above the session’s preplanned target heart rate. As the session commences, the chest strap, hooked up to a phone app, begins counting heartbeats. If, for example, during a 20-minute session the athlete’s heart beats a grand total of 2,200 times, the app does the math and reports a blended average of 110 beats per minute for each of the 20 minutes in the session.

To assign a further numeric value to the effort, our 40-year-old converts his 110-beat-per-minute blended session heart-rate average into a percentage. The old rough estimate is 220 minus the athlete’s age. In this example, 220 minus 40 equals 180. If 180 is treated as the estimated 100% heart-rate maximum, 110 is roughly 60% of that estimated maximum.

This formula is only an estimate. It is useful for simple training arithmetic, not for medical certainty. Individual maximum heart rate can vary widely. Anyone with cardiovascular, blood-pressure, medication, or medical concerns should use professional guidance before chasing heart-rate targets.

During the 20-minute session, the athlete pays attention to heart rate in real time. Where is he in relation to the predetermined goal? If the monitor indicates his heart is beating 101 times a minute, he needs to pick up the pace. If it reads 126, he can back off the pace a bit. Each successive week, the goal is to slightly increase pace and intensity.

Each week requires a slight bump in intensity. The following week the goal might rise from 60% to 62.5%. Numerically, this requires the athlete to increase the blended-session average from 110 beats per minute to roughly 113 beats per minute. Not much. Quite attainable for someone that has three successful 60% sessions under their belt from the previous week.

Exercising Versus Training

The key to successful periodization is establishing realistic goals and reverse-engineering a periodized game plan. Start off easy and establish an exercise rhythm and flow. Each week, the athlete asks of themselves a little more. The elephant is eaten one bite at a time.

There is a difference between exercising and training. Training requires thoughtful preplanning to reach a predetermined goal, a performance and / or physique goal. Without periodized planning, every exercise session is Groundhog Day, doomed to never doing more than treading water. Without a plan there can be no sustained progress.

Safety Note for Cardio, Heart Rate, and Fasted Training

This article preserves Marty Gallagher’s RAW perspective on cardio intensity, heart-rate monitors and periodized aerobic training. It is not individualized medical, cardiovascular, nutrition, fat-loss, rehabilitation, or programming advice.

Heart-rate targets, fasted cardio, running, interval work, stair climbing, rowing, cycling, elliptical work, and aggressive cardio progression are not automatically appropriate for every person. Age, medications, cardiovascular disease, blood pressure, diabetes, dizziness history, injury history, sleep, nutrition, and recovery capacity all matter.

Start gradually. Warm up. Progress duration, frequency, and intensity slowly. Do not treat the 220-minus-age formula as medical truth. Stop or scale back for chest pain, faintness, dizziness, unusual shortness of breath, irregular heartbeat sensations, numbness, sharp pain, confusion, severe fatigue, hypoglycemia symptoms, heat symptoms, or any symptom that feels different from normal training effort.

Equipment Notes for Cardio and Heart-Rate Training

The heart-rate monitor supplies the intensity report card. The cardio equipment supplies the mode. The plan supplies the progress.

Readers and facilities can compare exercise bikes, treadmills, elliptical trainers, indoor rowing machines, and stairclimbers. Each mode can be made measurable when the athlete tracks duration, frequency, and heart-rate intensity.

Specific cardio options such as the TrueForm Trainer curved treadmill with turf surface, Spirit Fitness CSC900 commercial stairclimber, Assault Fitness AirRower Elite rowing machine, Throwdown HIIT Bike Pro, and Spirit Fitness CE850 commercial adjustable-stride elliptical trainer may fit certain training spaces when the user, room, floor, coaching, and intended use align.

The equipment does not create periodization. The trainee, the monitor, the logbook, and the plan create periodization.

Related Cardio and Heart-Monitor Reading

For broader equipment-selection help, read Best Cardio Equipment Guide for Home, Commercial, and Rehab. For related Marty Gallagher heart-monitor articles, read Heart Monitor Weight Training Intensity and Heart Monitor Weight Training.

RAW with Marty Gallagher, J.P. Brice, and Jim Steel Podcast.

About the Author: Marty Gallagher

As an athlete Marty Gallagher is a national and world champion in Olympic lifting and powerlifting. He was a world champion team coach in 1991 and coached Black's Gym to five national team titles. He's also coached some of the strongest men on the planet including Kirk Karwoski when he completed his world record 1,003 lb. squat. Today he teaches the US Secret Service and Tier 1 Spec Ops on how to maximize their strength in minimal time. As a writer since 1978 he’s written for Powerlifting USA, Milo, Flex Magazine, Muscle & Fitness, Prime Fitness, Washington Post, Dragon Door and now IRON COMPANY. He’s also the author of multiple books including Purposeful Primitive, Strong Medicine, Ed Coan’s book Coan, The Man, the Myth, the Method and numerous others. Read the Marty Gallagher biography here.