Heart rate training
Train by heart rate
Every session at Altytude Fitness is one hour, coach-led and heart-rate monitored.
You wear a monitor, your live heart rate goes up on the screens and your effort shows as a colour.
This is what is going on underneath.
The Idea
Effort you can see
Same belt, same speed, two completely different workouts. The machine cannot tell the difference. Your heart can.
Heart rate is simple: working muscles need oxygen, and your heart speeds up to deliver it. Your max is set by age and genetics, so your zones are personal. We train by effort, not pace. The screen compares you to you, nobody else.
Your heart rate is your body’s honest answer to one question: how hard is this, for you? The harder your muscles work, the more oxygen they need and the faster your heart beats to deliver it. Your max is set by your age and your genes, not your fitness, so your zones are yours alone. That’s why we train by percentages, not speeds. The runner next to you might be quicker, but effort is personal, and the screen only ever compares you to you. As you get fitter your heart gets more efficient. Same pace, lower heart rate, faster recovery between pushes. That’s progress you can actually see.
The coach calls the zone, and everyone chases the same colour. What changes is the work it takes to get there. Sarah has been training for years, so she has to run to reach yellow. Mark joined last month and gets there at a jog. Both screens show yellow, because yellow is the zone the coach asked for and both of them are in it. The colour is the target. The speed underneath it is yours.
The colours
Four colours Three calls
When your coach calls HOLD, BUILD or BURN, that is the effort they want from you and the screen shows you whether you are there.
Across the hour we are after at least 12 minutes in Yellow and Red combined, a bit more in Endurance sessions. That is the dose that drives the change. Enough time above 80% to make your body adapt, not so much that you cannot come back tomorrow.
Recover
60% to 69%
Hold
70% to 79%
Build
80% to 89%
Burn
90% and above
Warm up, walk down and the recoveries between efforts. This is where you catch your breath so you can go again.
Comfortably uncomfortable. You could talk in short sentences. Builds your aerobic base and teaches your body to use fat for fuel.
Hard. Talking stops. This is where fitness moves and where the afterburn is earned.
Short, honest efforts at your limit. You visit Red. You do not live there.
What we measure
The numbers are yours
Speed, incline and watts tell you what the machine is doing. Heart rate tells you what your body is doing, and that is the thing we are actually training. Your zones are percentages of your own maximum, so your numbers are yours.
Someone who runs every week and someone coming back after a few years off can stand side by side and both get exactly the right session. Each is coached to their own effort, not to a pace on the belt.
45 / 60 / 90
Minutes, coach led
Minutes in yellow & red
1
Screen that matters
That is what makes the hour efficient.
Every minute is spent at an effort that is doing something.
The Fuel
What the hour burns
Green builds the engine. Yellow and Red spend the fuel.
While you train, your body draws on two fuels, fat and carbohydrate. In Green the mix leans towards the first, which is why the base work matters even though it feels manageable. As you push into Yellow and Red the mix shifts towards carbohydrate, but the total climbs steeply. Total is what changes body composition.
Swipe the chart sideways
View as a table
| Zone | Fat | Carbohydrate | Energy per minute |
|---|---|---|---|
| Recover | 65% | 35% | ×1.0 |
| Hold | 50% | 50% | ×1.8 |
| Build | 25% | 75% | ×2.6 |
| Burn | 10% | 90% | ×3.4 |
After the class
the after burn
The proper name is excess post exercise oxygen consumption, or EPOC.
When you push into Yellow and Red you demand more energy than your body can produce with oxygen in the moment, so it borrows. After the class it pays that debt back, and all of it costs calories. Spend enough of the hour above 80% and your metabolism stays raised well beyond the session itself.
Swipe the chart sideways
The strength zone
Sets, reps and getting stronger
The weights area is not rhythm work. There is no belt to keep up with and no beat to follow. You take a set, you finish it, you rest, and you go again.
Dumbbells, kettlebells, power bags, TRX and Bosu, in a dedicated area on the same floor as the Treads and the Erg. Your coach calls the movement, the reps and the tempo. The weight you pick is the one that makes the last two reps honest.
Muscle changes when it is asked for slightly more than it managed last time. Change one of these and the tissue rebuilds a bit stronger than it was.
A little more weight
An extra rep
A slower lowering
A shorter rest
On the weights floor
A note on strength
Heart rate is a poor guide while you are lifting.
It lags, then it spikes and neither tells you much. So we coach the colours on the Treads and the Erg and in the Strength zone we coach form and tempo instead. Follow the work on the screen there and the effort takes care of itself.
Swipe the chart sideways
Starting out
Your first few classes
Expect to see more Red than you planned to. That is normal. When you are new, your heart rate climbs fast and settles slowly, and it calms down as your fitness builds. Three things to focus on while it does.
Find green
Green is your steady working zone, around 70 to 80 percent of your max heart rate. You will overshoot it at first. Everyone does. The skill worth learning early is not staying out of Red, it is finding your way back to Green.
Learn the feel
The monitor tells you what your legs and lungs already know. Get to know what each colour feels like before you go chasing a number. Once you know the feel of Yellow, you will know when to push and when to hold without looking up.
Your screen only
Your zones are set from your own max heart rate, so your numbers will look different to the person next to you. The only comparison worth making is with you from last month.
That is the whole idea. Independent, coach-led and built around your own numbers.
