Choosing Between Heart Rate Monitors and Power Meters for Fitness Improvement

Question

I wish to integrate technology in my fitness regime. Should I pick a heart rate monitor or a power meter in this instance, which will aid my improvement further?

Answer 1

Heart rate monitors and power meters are two fitness enhancing devices that can measure one’s target effort more objectively than one’s subjective feelings of exertion. Among the two devices, heart rate monitors are cheaper and can be useful for long periods of steady-state which is in cardiovascular training, but tend to be slightly inconsistent due to temperature, time of day and personal physiology. On the other hand, a power meter measures the effort used by computing the force used to pedal the bike, however, it is expensive. A heart rate monitor can surely improve training and fitness at a relatively low cost. But for consistent effort and its measurement, using a power meter, although more costly, is better.

Comments

Why not both?

I ride to HR for Z2 but for most other training, I ride to Power Zones since im training for my first metric century and i want to be able to maintain a certain power.

Also just good to know your HR at all times when exercising.

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Good stuff. My approach is to use HR when training my heart, and PWR when training my muscles.

That is, for long cardio rides my primary concern is heart rate, and I evaluate drift/decoupling after the fact to determine how to adjust the duration of my next cardio ride.

For everything else I target power zones. I check drift on threshold workouts to determine how to adjust my intensity.

In both cases, I want to see drift creeping in toward the end of the ride.

This helps make my training blocks more "closed loop" so I can change training emphasis based on what my body is tellimg me rather than a calendar based on the average of a bunch of other people.

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the greatest worry is when your hrm shows 0 bpm

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Good content as always from you two. No one addresses what is likely a not uncommon problem which is the effect of beta blocker meds on heart rate, be it blood pressure (likely most common) or other malady. Of course many different meds and dose ranges but the effects should be qualitatively the same. My educated guess it makes HR in these situations unreliable.
Thanks gentlemen,
Terry (USA)

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