Thank you for your interest in Coach Robb’s Heart Rate Zone Calculator. This important resource is essential to over training, under training, and ultimately improving performance.

Why is Heart Rate training important? Measuring your heart rate during exercise and training helps you determine the intensity level of the exercise you are putting your body through and the physiological changes that occur. A heart rate training zone determines the upper and lower limits of training intensities. Therefore, once you determine your heart rate zones, you can train with specificity in the heart rates zones necessary to meet your personal goals.

Why is this important when it comes to performance? Because your heart is a muscle, as you become more aerobically fit, your heart rate is able to deliver more blood and oxygen to the muscles more efficiently.  If your training programs are designed to develop your aerobic base, your resting heart rate should decrease as your fitness improves. So if you don’t keep updating your heart rate zones (by subtracting your max heart rate with the most up-to-date resting heart rate), you will be using erroneous numbers which is going to cause you to either over train or under train negatively impacting any performance gains. To learn more on how to capture your resting heart rate accurately, click here.

How do you determine your max heart rate? We use field testing for each individual sport to determine sport-specific max heart rates. To determine your heart rate zones, the first thing you need to do is to determine your max heart rate, or the hardest you can work during a particular exercise effort. It is important to note that max heart rates should be evaluated for every sport you do. For example, running tends to have the highest number because you stress the muscle more than say cycling or swimming. Whatever your sport is, be sure to do a max heart rate test for each modality. Note that the more aerobically fit you become, your max heart rate number will go down, which is why we recommend testing every 6 weeks. To learn more about how to conduct your own field test, click here.

To maximize your results, please follow the instructions below.

Step 1. Download the attached Coach Robb Heart Rate Zone Calculator and fill in maximum heart rate numbers and resting heart rate numbers for each sport in your training program. The zones will automatically populate.

Step 2. If you don’t know your resting heart rate numbers, download the Coach Robb Boby Analysis Spreadsheet and track your resting heart rate for one week. Use the weekly average column as your resting heart rate number.

To learn more about the Heart Rate Zone Calculator, watch this video.