Today's Inane Fitness Advice

[Tapeworm]

Brought to you by Joe Friel (via twitter):-

"There are no podium positions for high heart rates. Train to race fast with a low HR."

Gold, absolute gold.

[devinci]

High heart rate=unfit

[LouisN]

Damn!!!

All these years of training to keep my HR as low as possible.

But I didn't achieve any podium either...

Louis

[bricky21]

High heart rate=unfit

He must be talking about the 65% of the population who's heart rate shoots to nearly 200 bpm while tying their shoes

[CoachFergie]

I'm a coach potato who has been keeping his heart rate low for 40 years.

I'M GUNNA BE THE BESTEST!!!!!

[kevinkalis]

Maybe they should just declare the person with the lowest resting HR the winner.

[strobbekoen]

Is that all he said, or does it come with a context of some sort ?
I hope

[devinci]

That was his daily training "thought"

[strobbekoen]

I'll try to be nice and interprete it as "train to maximize your power (and/or power over weight) relative to your HR thresholds".

[Geoff]

As much as I don't ascribe to Joe Friel, I may give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he is talking about saving energy where possible. Maybe if you replace the concept of 'high heart rates' with 'kilojoule expenditure'...

[MattSoutherden]

I think it's just a case of spewing a soundbite on to Twitter without carefully considering the wording.

I can relate to that.

[Tapeworm]

Friel has now backed this up with:-

"Training to get your heart rate higher is easy—just lose some fitness."

I mean I think I have an idea of what he is trying to say but... wow. On it's own it's nonsense.

[Bvb45]

For endurence sports, training with a lower heart rate can be beneficial, in that you train to burn fat better and more efficiently so than when you run out of Carbs and mainly switch to fat burn, you'll have a big advantages over those who didn't train for it.

I have a quote somewhere from Mark Allen, where he said he deliberately ran 8 miles in a period with the dedicated goal of going as fast as he could, under the constriction that he (for him as HR zones is personal) could not surpass 155bpm at all. He was amazed in the start of having to run 8:15/mile at some points and then later by repeating this he finally got it down to 5:50/mile, which saved his ass multiple times during IM length competitions, according to himself.

For biking Friels advice could also be translated into: When using a Watt meter for non-drafting(TT) events like long TTs and Tri, train for consistent, constant Watt-age and not spikes and rests, don't cook yourself before the run. If there is no run, ie a long TT only, then still make sure you can keep your pace to the finish line though this will almost always be at superhigh BPMs as its so intense, yet so short a sprint(even 60km).

[xcforme]

Isn't all this common knowledge?! I mean, most people know that a good training programme should involve some "base" training at low HR and then as you get closer to your main season goals high intensity intervals are incorporated.

Anyway, since were discussing this, mr. Friel got some extra attention which is is probably all he wanted

[Tapeworm]

A low heart rate may (MAY!) indeed be an indication of fitness, efficiency etc. You don't nessecarily get fitness and efficiency from a low HR.

The ability to metabolize fat etc is a cellular adaptation and not linked to HR. I could get your HR to 180bpm without you doing a thing.