Getting Into The Zone

Several months ago I was reading an article on how to loose weight and be more successful in your training endeavors.  The article was on  Zone Training.  I knew about zone training and what it can do for you to help  getting more fit and loosing weight.  What I did not know is how do I know my workout are too much or just right.  When do I need to tone it down or work even harder.  Why is this important information?  I wanted a simple measure to tell me if I was on track.  More importantly I wanted a simple baseline to give my patients to help them loose weight.  I also need a measure to know which patients are telling the truth when they tell me "I am working my butt off and I am still not loosing the weight!  I am doing everything and its not working!".  Loosing weight is not hard formula to understand.  If you burn more calories than you take in you will loose weight.  The questions are: Are you really eating the right foods at the right times?  Are you sleeping the right amount of time?   Are your workouts efficiently burning the right calories at the right times?  And are the workouts hard enough for your current fitness level to get the results you want?

This installment is going to address Zone Training and how to use it to your benefit.  I will in the future address the other questions one by on in future blogs.

So, how do you know if your training is challenging enough  and when is it time to back off? It all starts with one simple question.  What is your resting heart rate?  More importantly what is you resting heart rate the next morning after a big intensity workout.  You begin with calculating your average heart rate over several days.  How you do this is? The very moment you awake in the morning you take your resting heart.  You do this before your feet hit the floor.  Do this for 5 days, add the numbers together and divide by 5.  For me when I started this training exercise my average waking heart rate was 55 beats per minute. Today at the half way mark, my resting average heart rate is 43 beats per minute.  Why is this important?  First it is a measure of how fit you are.  Second, it allows you to see how your body has recovered from the work out the day before.  If your resting heart rate is greater than or equal to 5 beats per minute higher than your average resting heart, then you need to take it easy on today's work out.  Your body has not fully recovered from yesterdays work out.  You put a large stress on  you body and it need to heal.  If your resting morning heart rate in in your normal range then your ready for more intensity.  You need to challenge yourself more!

So how does this play into Zone training and why is Zone train important in helping you loose weight and get stronger?
Stayed tuned!