3449: Heart Rate Exercise Zones Simplified for All Ages (WW)

Zone 2 simplified to 110-130 BPM for most people

Cabral cuts through zone complexity by offering a simple framework: zone 2 is 110-130 BPM for ages 30-60, subtract 10 for over 60, add 10 for under 30. No complicated formulas needed.

"So I've shared these before. I'm going to link all the shows up. Again, if you like this, awesome. Let's go back. Let's do a deeper dive on that. All of those shows are at stephencabral.com slash 3449. So one we talked about is the general indicator for how you track your heart rate. And that's typically our maximum heart rate. It's 220 minus your age, right? So let's just say you're 50 years old. 220 minus your age would be what, 170? All right. So if you're 50 years old, your maximum heart rate, just general, again, like not saying you're trained or untrained, it's about 170. I'm going to make this much easier for you to figure out how do you calculate the different zones, but that's what it would be. If you're a 40, it would be 180. And you just kind of go up and down from there. The other one that we talked about before is your maximum aerobic fitness heart rate. And that's going to be 180 minus your age. So when you look at that, it's essentially just a little higher than zone two for most people. And that's why, again, I just think that we need to simplify it for most people because it ends up being like 133 or 137. You get to remember all these different numbers in your head too much for most people and also unnecessary. There's a few more precision-based calculators that we haven't gone over on the show. That's the Carvanone formula, and that's for more precision-based training. Also, on many of your watches now, you can actually run a 5K if you are able to run that 3.1 miles or just over time with a Coros watch or a lot of watches. I like the Coros one. It's inexpensive. I've done a product review on it before. We'll link that up here today too. Simple, fairly inexpensive. And it will actually start to gauge where you are in terms of your overall fitness in terms of aerobic and maybe threshold-based heart rates. There's one more called the Tanaka formula. Maybe it's pronounced a little bit differently, but for older athletes, like if you are an athlete, you're past the age of, let's say, 45, 50 years old, this is a little bit more precise. But when I say more precise, it's like three to seven beats per minute, right? So heart rates are beats per minute. If you're at rest, like I always like my clients to be under a 60 for heart rate overnight. So I like their heart rate to be maybe high 40s to high 50s. And so it's a 49 or it's a 57 beats per minute. So that's the beats per minute BPM. And that's really what we're looking at. So when we're training at sleep, you might be a 52. But when you're training, you might have a heart rate all the way up to the 170 at peak heart rate. Okay. So let's go over this now. We're going to go over all the different benefits of each zone. And then I'll give you the heart rate in a simple 20-point range that's even, and you don't have to worry about it. You honestly don't. Unless you are looking to get super precise and working with a coach, probably never necessary to know that, right? Okay. So let's go over it. Zone one is your recovery or very light human activity, as I call it. You're just out for a regular walk. You're standing, you're walking around the house. You're doing a little bit of housework. You're just kind of moving about. That's it. You're in zone one. Typically, for most people, your heart rate's going to be in the 80s to maybe 90s. That's it for most people. It'll be under 100. If your heart rate is over 100 doing very light activity, then it could be a sign that you need to work on your aerobic-based conditioning, that you're becoming deconditioned because everyday things are taxing your body. Now, there can be other reasons why. Electrolyte imbalances, inflammation, we're not going to go over those here today, but we're going to say that our goal, though, is to make life easier on your body. And that's really what a lot of aerobic and sprint-based training can do for you. All right. Zone two, this really is where the magic happens. I never really believed that, honestly, until the last few years, just going in-depth and understanding how do we help people build the machine for great longevity. And it is zone two, I always call it boring cardio. It is zone two, basically steady state cardio. Believe it or not, that is where most people should be for most of their aerobic-based training, especially until they become more advanced. And even when you become more advanced and you put in more miles, it's still mainly in zone two, but a couple of days a week for a tempo run, which we'll talk about in a second, or sprints is the only time you're outside of it, but those runs are not as long because they're faster, right? So like on Tuesdays, Tuesdays are my sprint day. And so when I'm doing a sprinting day, I'm working up to high zone four, zone five. And again, I'll share that in just one second. Thursdays are more easy zone two, but then in the middle, there's tempo. There's a little bit of faster running, but then it's zone two. The other runs and the other cardio are all zone two. When I'm in the sauna, it's high zone one, low zone two. So that zone two though is really, people call it the fat burning zone. Sure, a greater percentage of fat is burned more in that zone. There's no doubt about it. It doesn't mean as many calories, but it does mean, yes, a greater percentage because of where your heart rate is. So your body's still able to oxidize fat very easily where it's not once you get into the higher percentages, but don't let that fool you. You still burn body fat after the workout as well. So zone two is that magic spot that most people, if you don't know where to start, you start there. It's a safe zone to be in. Again, I can't give you medical advice, but it's a safe zone to be in. You burn fat efficiently. You learn to better utilize oxygen in your mitochondria. You can still usually breathe through your nasal passages while keeping your mouth closed too. That's very helpful and again, great for long distance endurance to build up and longevity. Nobody needs to run a marathon. I'm not saying that. But if you're able to run a few miles or bike more than double the amount that you would run, it can be really great for, as they say, building that aerobic engine, which is your heart, your lungs, your vascular system. You need that for life. All right. And again, it reduces all-cause mortality, improves cardiovascular disease. I could go on and on. And it also becomes, you become overall a better athlete. You really do. Zone three. Zone three is more no man's land or no woman's land. It really is like, this is a place that you're not typically wanting to train in. Now, I will say working with a lot of athletes and then maybe older athletes that have become deconditioned, it's really hard for people to run a lot of the time and stay in zone two. Once they start to run, they just come out of zone two because it's too hard on their body. So that's usually why we start with a walk, run, walk, run. So we do anywhere from three to five minutes of light running, and then we walk, let the heart rate come back down, and then we run. And so that's literally what we do to stay in zone two. But I also have never found it to be really that much of an issue to allow the body to be in that lower zone three, not higher, but lower zone three. This is what they generally consider the gray zone. You typically don't want to train in this zone, and we'll talk about where your heart rate would be in just a moment for there. It's not necessary for most individuals in general. Those training for half marathons, marathons, pushing lactate thresholds, totally get it, but most people don't need to be in the zone three. All right. Now, zone four, yes, there's a time and and place. This is that 80 to 90% of max heart rate. This can be for some of your high intensity interval training. It can be on the lower side. You can start to push your tempo, again, not a full run, but some tempo miles in there to feel like you're getting closer to race pace because you're pushing the anaerobic threshold there. So this can be a really nice spot to be for a lot of individuals. As I said before, it is typically your race pace. You want to get used to the feeling of race pace. But as I said in the beginning, most beginners don't really need to be here, right? But as you get more advanced, yeah, you can push 80 to 90% more on your interval sprint days, might be the first couple. Before then you get to zone five, which is our last one."

Zone 2 is boring cardio but where the magic happens

Cabral admits he never believed in zone 2 until recent years of studying longevity science. He now calls it boring cardio but acknowledges it's where most people should spend most of their aerobic training time.

"I never really believed that, honestly, until the last few years, just going in-depth and understanding how do we help people build the machine for great longevity. And it is zone two, I always call it boring cardio."

Progressive exercise approach prevents injury

Cabral outlines his graduated approach: start with 7,500-10,000 daily steps, then add aerobic cardio, then bodyweight training, then weights, and finally HIIT. Sprinting while deconditioned leads to injury.

"We start our clients with 7,500 to 10,000 steps per day. There's no need to sprint if you're deconditioned. You're only going to potentially lead to injury in that way."