How can you find your Zone 2 heart rate?

Question

Is there anyone who understands how to calculate your Zone 2 heart rate for effective training?

Answer 1

There are several ways in which a person could look for the heart rate zone 2. The most precise way is doing a lab test with metabolic cart which can be quite pricey. Another option would be utilizing a lactate from one’s blood. Nicer tool could be the formula number two, Phil Maffetone method (180 - age), Karvonen formula or other similar ones. Fitness trackers and apps are also able to estimate Zone 2 heart rate zones based on a person’s resting and maximal heart rates. Last scraping would be the talk test or rate of perceived exertion in which a person would be exercising at an intensity and pace, which is comfortable to talk.

Comments

I’ve landed on using the Karvonen formula after so much confusion. The most common “formula” I hear is 60-70% of max heart rate which would be 109-127bpm. Under the Karvonen formula it is 136-152bmp. This is two completely different definitions of zone 2. Listening to Dr Attia’s conversation with the cycling trainer that invented zone 2 training (pretty sure he is considered as inventing it), the litmus test is whether you can not just hold a conversation, but that if you were on the phone with someone, they could tell you were exercising even though you can hold the conversation. For me the Karvonen formula and this litmus test are very closely aligned.

---

zones for garmin should be set to %HRR or %LTHR. then click reset zones, then return to "BPM" just to view the numbers and do not reset anymore and just go back to %HRR / %LTHR after viewing the numbers. apple and garmin are very close in my case after going to a lab (i only have these 2 devices). the difference are just around 2-3 BPMs

---

Great content, I did a energy expenditure test at a local centre recently and outcome was to keep my heart rate around 110 to maximize fat burn over carb burn. Much lower then I thought it would be.

---

Funny that this content came out now i booked a lab test yesterday, doing it today.

---

I'm only a few weeks into training for a 10k using Garmin coaching. Historically I've spent way more time on a bike, so running, especially on a plan and focusing on improvement, is pretty new to me. It was interesting to see how very different Garmin and Strava estimated my zones. But someone below commented on how to adjust Garmin based on HRR. Doing that brought them much more in line. Thanks for this content!

---

Hello Shervin, I don't know if you're familiar with this but...there is a tool by Suunto called "Zonesense" and they say it's Pretty accurate to measure your aerobic, anaerobic and VO2 MAX in real time.

---

How to combine all of this with gym, it’s becoming overwhelming.

 3 times a week cardio + 4 times a week strength training - all to maintain your health for longevity, when to live and where to get energy for all of this?

---

I have my own way to determine my LT1 pace. i.e when I do steady state pace runs that are more than 1.5 hours long, I do a post run analysis to see if for that run my HR is also steady state.  Another day, I will run at a faster steady state pace of the same or longer duration and if this time my HR is not longer steady state and keeps climbing up, I treat that run as exceeding my LT1. Hence the previous slower run would be my LT1 threshold pace.