What is my Target Heart Rate (THR) Zone?
How do we do the calculation?
Are there easier formulas out there?
Let’s start with the Target Heart Rate (THR) Zone first, our (THR) should be 55-80% of your maximum heart rate based on The American College of Sports Medicine recommendation.
How do we calculate this?
First you need to have a couple of key numbers from yourself: Age and Resting Heart Rate (RHR), 220 is Maximum Heart rate (MHR)
Say we have a person at 60 years old and his resting heart rate (RHR) is 70.
Here is the Karvonen formula calculation for his 55%-80% (THR)
(220-Age) - (RHR) x 55% + (RHR) = 55% (THR)
(220-60) - (70) x 55% + (70) = 119.5
(220-60) - (70) x 60% + (70) = 124
(220-60) - (70) x 65% + (70) = 128.5
(220-60) - (70) x 70% + (70) = 133
(220-60) - (70) x 75% + (70) = 137.5
(220-60) - (70) x 80% + (70) = 142
So this 60 years old man's target heart rate zone is from 119.5-142 beats per minute.
If you think this is very complicated for you to calculate, here is the simple version of the calculation, however you will see there will be a difference from the calculation.
Say we are going to take the same data from the above formula.
(220-Age) x 55% = 55% (THR)
(220-60) x 55% = 88
(220-60) x 60% = 96
(220-60) x 65% = 104
(220-60) x 70% = 112
(220-60) x 75% = 120
(220-60) x 80% = 128
I personally like the Karvonen formula better because it is more personal and accurate. Not every person has the same resting heart rate and the more specific we do the calculation the more benefits for us to do the exercises in the target heart rate zone.
Hope you all like this blog!
