I'm in my mid-40s and I do cardio 3x weekly, and during my sessions, it's basically HIIT training. I try to keep my HR above 150 during my sessions, but it peaks in the low 180s intermittently.
Is this okay? My doctor noted potential concerns with getting my HR up that high, but it could be fine, she wasn't sure. I don't get any dizziness or anything (generally that happens if I sustain a heart rate above 185 for a bit). I'm not staying at 180 bpm, that's just the peak, I'm targeting an average HR of around 150-155 for my workouts.
In a 60 minute workout, I'll probably spend 10-15 minutes with my HR between 166 and 182 range.
Not sure if I should scale it down a bit or take it easier, or if this is fine.
I wonder if those zones are actually well-tuned to your heart rate.
Any workout that could score that high of an exercise load and exercise effect on both aerobic and anaerobic for me would basically have me floored for multiple days.
How hard would you say this effort was? What kind of an effort was it?
EDIT: To add - it's been mentioned in other places in the thread, but heart rate is highly individual. The advice of 220 - age being your max heart rate is so off it's kind of not even funny.
Heart rate when measured only by a watch can be a bit hit and miss - for truly accurate data you want a heart rate strap or an armband-based monitor. This is only really important if you're truly interested in optimizing though, so if it's not, feel free to not bother. Watch sensors can tend to over- or under-read though, especially when there's plenty of arm movement involved.
High effort overall, with intermittent lower effort if I need to back off. Workout is a 45-60 minute Dance Dance Revolution session, doing the hardest songs I can, occasionally broken up with some mid-difficulty songs if my HR gets too high. The track list is custom from online stepmania stuff, so longer songs in many cases and harder than a lot of the stuff in the original games.
Heart rate drops fairly quickly between songs, as you can see on the graph I posted in the comments.
Did you make the call to take a mid-difficulty song because you saw the heart rate number on your watch and got concerned, or did you feel physically unable to continue at the prior intensity?
If I were you, I would try to figure out what your actual max heart rate is, then tune the watch settings based on that. There are various test protocols you can do to figure that out, and it's possible to do it in lab conditions if you want to be really safe about it.
It varies. Some of the tracks are really hard, so I’ll take a minute to let my heart rate drop back to between 150 and 160 before starting another track.
Not fully unable to continue usually, but a bit out of breath after intense effort, so I take maybe 30 seconds to catch my breath before continuing.
You should expect an effort near your maximum heart rate to be the kind of deal where you basically have to lie down and hyperventilate. They are very, very painful to do.
If you don't feel like that description fits with how it felt to hit 180, then it's quite possible you have a maximum heart rate that is higher than that.
Gotcha, yeah, it’s not like that. More of the standing, hands on knees heavy breathing for a few seconds while I catch my breath. I’ll be gasping at the end of a really hard track, likely as the difficulty moves toward anaerobic near the end, but never like I need a lie down. My heart rate drops pretty quickly as soon as a song ends.
Edit - what you’re talking regarding hyperventilate and lie down is what it feels like if I try to push and sustain anything around 188-190. I start getting lightheaded and have to stop. Anything between 175 and 185 bpm is okay for short periods. The highest reading I’ve ever seen on my watch for my heart rate was 192.