How can you best adapt your workout to your current shape and avoid losing motivation because it is too hard? Or vice versa make sure you push yourself enough to actually gain a better level of fitness over time?

Using heart-rate zones when you work out will allow you to train at different intensities based on percentages of your maximum heart-rate. The advantages of this training method are numerous, which is why our entire concept at IQNITER is based on this philosophy. 

Training with guidance from your heart-rate zones prevents you from training too hard on your easy/recovery days, reducing the risk of fatigue and overtraining; it also helps you to recover. By recovering properly during your easy days your body will be fresher for your next hard session. Equally, you will be able to accurately track your effort in interval sessions, when you want to be working at a higher intensity.

Once you know what your maximum heart-rate is, you can start your zone-based training with the following in mind:

Zone 1: 50-59% of HR Max + Zone 2: 60-69% of HR Max

These zones are used for warming up before the actual training and for cooling down after training. If you are completely untrained, the training zone is suitable for accustoming your body’s joints, tendons and muscles to your new sport, and according to recommendations from WHO you will improve your overall health and well-being simply by spending 150 minutes pr. week in these heart rate zones.

Here’s how it feels: Comfortable pace that you can keep for several hours without getting tired. You can have a conversation without any problems while training in this heart rate zone.

Zone 3: 70-75% of HR Max + Zone 4: 76-81% of HR Max

In these zones you mostly train your endurance. You increase the number of blood vessels around the muscles, so the oxygen supply is better and improves the muscle cells’ ability to use fat as fuel.

Here’s how it feels: The pace will be experienced as somewhere between easy and nicely challenging. You can clearly feel your breathing, but if you are in good shape, you can find a good rhythm that you can keep for a long time. You can talk along the way, but must draw good air in between the sentences.

Zone 5: 82-87% of HR Max 

This zone is used to increase your speed and fitness. If you are well trained, you will be in this zone when you line up for an exercise run or other type of competition. You train your heart to a greater extent than in the previous zones, and the muscles develop more enzymes for the combustion process, so that it can proceed faster.

Here’s how it feels: You train hard and very focused on training. You can’t talk while you’re at it – just utter a few words. Typically, you train somewhere between 10 and 40 minutes in this heart rate zone.

Zone 6: 88-95% of HR Max  + Zone 7: 96-100% of HR Max 

If you are well-trained, training in these two more brutal zones can improve your fitness. You push the heart close to the maximum so that it gets bigger and stronger, your oxygen uptake increases and you can maintain a higher maximum speed.

Here’s how it feels: You’re being pushed to the limit. You gasp for breath and can’t talk. You can only train for a few minutes in this zone.