Photo courtesy of Dreamstime
All too often you see the same person plodding away on the treadmill at 1 mile an hour, or the man on the bike peddling at a painfully slow rate, or the lady on the elliptical barely making one revolution a minute. You notice that these same people always look the same day in and day out. Months go by and they probably still have the extra pounds they are hoping to lose but never do, the same lack of definition. They tell themselves that they are going to the gym, getting a workout in, but still can't lose weight. In their minds they are perplexed and frustrated as to why their fitness routine isn't yielding any results.
The answer, why it may be obvious to you and me, is that they simply aren't working hard enough. If all you were to do were take a slow stroll and constitute that as your cardio routine for the day, and then reward yourself with a big ice cream sundae afterwords because you 'deserved it after your workout', the calories consumed would far outweigh those few burned and you would never reach a state of caloric deficit.
Even if you don't want to lose weight, simply want to maintain, or aspire to reach a higher fitness level, you need to do your cardio activity in the right target zone. The best way to do this is to monitor your heart rate and then work to keep it in that zone. Ideally, you want to get your heart to about 70-80% of your maximum and keep it there for the duration of your workout.
To figure out what your target zone is, first find what your maximum heart rate is. An easy way to estimate this is to subtract your age from 220. Once you have that number, multiply it by 0.7 and then by 0.8. Those two numbers will give you what you should keep your heart rate between. An example: say John is 30, then it looks like this:
220 - 30 = 190
190 x 0.7 = 133
190 x 0.8 = 152
Now, John knows he should aim to keep his pulse between 133 and 152.
By gauging your effort according to your heart rate you can make sure you're workouts are the most effective and that you will continue to progress your fitness level!
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