Thread: Do you do cardio with a Heartrate monitor? (I'm thinking about buying Polar)

Yah i have a telemetry strap and monitor.
I find it keeps me going hard to stay in my zone. if i see if it goes down even a few beats, thats enough to rev me up more. where as when i dont have my heart rate monitor, i dont go as intense as id like to

Nice, im gonna have to try that out...

fuck the heart rate zone. that is the biggest waste of time.

I use a heart rate monitor just to watch my heart rate recovery. I want to see how long it takes me. If you are working on performance, you can sprint for a set distance and then rest until you are at 60-65% max HR and then sprint again to make sure that you are getting a maximum power output. Otherwise, there is no need for it. Just go by RPE.

As always, it depends what you want to do. When I'm running or biking each workout has duration and/or intervals targeted for each zone to either work on strength, power or endurance. It's also a good guage of progress, because if I can hold a higher wattage or speed at a lower heart rate, it means I'm better conditioned.

Here's a little Heart Rate Monitor program I wrote for the Sony PSP.



That image represents a 14 minute interval which started as a walk,
then a sprint and cool down at the end.
Haven't really put it to use at the gym yet, since I wasn't really training when I wrote it.

It's pretty cool for walking because it speaks your heartrate at regular intervals
over your mp3 playlist that is playing, so you don't need to look at it.

Am I reading that wrong or did they die after the peak in heart rate?

Damn. Post-exercise peril.