OH! Magazine - Australian Version January 2015 (Australian Version) | Page 10

MICHELLE
BRIDGES

INTENSITY
& HEART RATE

Michelle Bridges explains intensity and its role in heart rate training.
s personal trainers love banging on
about exercise – what to do, how
often we should do it. Stick us in a room
and together and every exercise known to
mankind will get covered in seconds flat.

U

What is not so easy to understand though
is how hard we should train. I belong to the
school of flog-yer-guts-out because it gives
me the results that I’m looking for, so the
sweat-o-meter is usually there for me. But
this kind of training may not suit everyone.
Whilst consistency is probably more
important than intensity, but if you’re in
the market for some spectacular results
then it’s probably fair to say that intensity
is your friend.
Which brings me to the subject of heart
rate training. Pretty much every bit of
cardio equipment in modern gyms has a
heart rate function. My preference though

is a personal heart rate monitor. These
have a sensor that straps around your
chest and a wristwatch that picks up the
heart rate signal.
Personal heart rate monitors enable you to
actually see the intensity that you’re
exercising at during your workout. Afterwards
you can check in with how many calories
you’ve burnt, your average heart rate and the
maximum level that your heart rate spiked at.
Why is this so useful? Well, for me it
removes any doubt about my workout
intensity level. Not how much effort I
thought I’d put in, put rather how much I
actually put in.
And this is important because the higher
your heart rate, the more calories you burn.
And for us calorie conscious girls (and
blokes) it means that we can monitor our
energy output, which in turn allows us to

keep a check on our energy input ie. food.
Heart rate monitors often refer to ‘fat
burning’ zones and ‘fitness’ zones. The
concept here is that our bodies will burn a
greater amount of fat when we’re training at
low intensity (around 60%) than we will
when we’re training at a high intensity
(around 35%), which is true. This is
misleading though – sure, we burn a greater
percentage of fat at lower intensities, but
you’ll always burn more kilojoules in a high
intensity workout over the same period of
time, and therefore more fat in the process.
Don’t get all carried away with the idea of
cruising through a sweat free workout as
the best way to lose a few holiday kilos
though – the average person will burn
around four or five times more calories in a
high intensity workout than a ‘fat burning’
session, meaning you’ll need to train a lot
longer for the same net effect.

Michelle’s Tip
Heart rate training is not a pure science, and is prone to
minor variations. If you use heart rate monitored gym
equipment, try and use the same piece each time for
consistency. Look for around ten calories a minute for a
good fitness/fat loss balance.

10

JAN 2015 ( OH! MAGAZINE )

www.michellebridges.com.au

( Fitness )