Do you know your optimal heart rate for the active consumption of fatty acids from fat depots? Learn to calculate your heart rate now. Heart rate is essential for those people who decide to get rid of body fat. In addition, the pulse is important not only for fat burning, but also for your health. Let's deal with this together.
The value of the pulse for fat burning
It should be said right away that the pulse is an oscillation of the walls of arterial vessels, which appear as a result of the contraction of the heart muscle. Also, the pulse is very often called the heart rate or heart rate for short. It is this abbreviation that we will use in the future.
When an adult is at rest, the heart rate is in the range of 60-90 beats per minute. These readings are directly related to the level of your cardio training. Simply put, in people who are actively involved in sports, the heart muscle may contract with increased strength, but the frequency of these contractions will be lower.
This allows you to pump more blood in comparison with an untrained person and spend less effort for this. For this reason, the heart will serve you for a much longer period of time without much wear and tear. As a result, your resting heart rate will always be as close to the lower limit value as possible.
Heart rate is also very important for fat burning in those moments when you do cardio training. It is heart rate that is the main parameter for determining the intensity of cardio loads. Sometimes on specialized web resources you can come across a question - why control the heart rate during classes. This is primarily due to the effectiveness of the training, and will also allow you to be sure that the training is beneficial to your health.
Note that in this article we will consider the effectiveness of heart rate for fat burning in relation to cardio training only. This is because strength training measures intensity in a different way. Today, it is important for us to understand how heart rate affects the lipolysis process in order to make exercises more effective.
Heart rate for fat burning with cardio workouts
With your heart rate, you can determine the intensity of any cardio activity. Recall that these include running, swimming, cycling, etc. First, you need to determine the maximum heart rate for your body. It is very easy to do this, it is enough to subtract your age in years from 220. The resulting value will be your maximum heart rate. By the way, if you intend to play sports seriously, we recommend that you purchase a heart rate monitor. This simple and inexpensive device will make your classroom life much easier.
Why do we need to know the indicator of the maximum heart rate? Everything is very simple here, since you should never train at an intensity exceeding this value, since you will only harm your body. Based on the research results, training intensity zones were obtained, work in which can lead to different results.
For this, the so-called cardio heart rate limits were used, within which the cardiac muscle is able to provide effective oxygen supply to the tissues. In other words, while working within these limits, carbohydrates with fats can be used by the body for the synthesis of ATP with the participation of oxygen. This process is called aerobic glycolysis. Let's take a look at all of these three cardio intensity zones.
- 60–70 percent of your maximum heart rate. You probably already figured out how to calculate these limits for yourself. If someone else does not know this, then simply multiply your maximum heart rate by 60-70 percent. On average, this value will be between 120 and 140 beats per minute. This is the most effective heart rate for fat burning. In order for the lipolysis process to proceed as actively as possible, you should work in this area for about 45 minutes. During the first half hour of training, the body will consume the carbohydrates it has, after which it will switch to using fat deposits.
- 70–80 percent of your maximum heart rate. In this heart rate range, you maximize your aerobic endurance performance. Here, the body also actively uses carbohydrates and fats, but the latter are slightly less active. Beginners should work in the first range, and more experienced athletes should go to this one. A combination of strength training and cardio training is also very effective. First, you work with weights and burn carbs quickly, and then use cardio equipment to get rid of fat.
- 80–85 percent of your maximum heart rate. Here the aerobic process of obtaining energy turns into anaerobic or, more simply, oxygen is no longer used. As a result, fat burning in the third heart rate range is impossible, since this process requires oxygen.
You will learn from this video what role the heart rate plays in fat burning:
