Heart Rate Training Zones
Heart Rate Training Zones
Most heart rate monitors (and all of ours), will automatically calculate your maximum heart rate (MHR) for you once you enter your age. Once you have your maximum heart rate you can then calculate your ideal heart rate training zones.
Use our heart rate calculator below to calculate your maximum heart rate, and target aerobic heart rate training zone.
Please select gender and enter age
The calculation is your age, subtracted from a possible heart beats per minute, which is 220 for men, and 226 for women. This calculation for maximum heart rate is a standard formula, appropriate for anyone who is not presently a regular exerciser and leads a fairly sedentary lifestyle.
As you get fitter, your heart gets fitter with you and so this calculation may need adjusting to ensure you are training in the correct heart rate zone to get the most effective workout for your desired fitness goal.
This can be done by using a fitness test function provided by your heart rate monitor (like our Polar FT40), if your heart rate monitor doesn’t have this function you could do a manual fitness test, as described in our heart rate monitor review. Or, the rather unscientific route to updating your maximum heart rate to include your new found fitness – reduce your age very slightly in the maximum heart rate calculation.
Heart Rate Training Zones
Heart rate zones are usually split into the below four zones and your fitness goal will determine which zone you need to train in.
| Recovery/Weight Loss | 60-70% |
| Aerobic | 70-80% |
| Anaerobic | 80-90% |
| Maximum | 90-100% |
When you know which zone you want, simply multiply your maximum heart rate by the upper and lower percentages of that heart rate zone or use our heart rate zones for men chart or heart rate zones for women chart to find your personal heart rate zones.
For more information on heart rate training zones see our heart rate monitors reviews.