How to get started using HRM and cadence to improve

[gresford]

Hi, wow it is nice and peaceful here on the training pages. I should come here more often.

I have just bought a Garmin 1000 with HRM and cadence, neither of which I've ever had before. I've been cycling regularly for a couple of years now and bought these with an eye to improving my fitness and power, I don't race this is really just for my own sense of achievement and to get to work and back quicker on my bike than I do now and get faster on the Sunday bunch rides.

My question is can anyone please recommend a simple guide to using HRM and cadence in my training? Or if there is a good thread on BNA that already covers this topic I'm happy to be pointed at that.
For example info on how I could incorporate training into the daily commute, most efficient cadence, recovery times, that sort of thing. I also need a basic explanation of the different heart rate zones and where ton ride within them for best results.
I have googled but TBH there was too much info and I ended up confusing myself!

Thanks!

[Derny Driver]

Im just heading out for my monthly game of cards (500) but will reply to you on the weekend.
But quickly ..
Before setting HR zones you must find your maximum heart rate. Not 220 minus your age, you need your real max. You can only get that by putting yourself under extreme effort, like pushing over the top of a 300 metre long steep hill, or a flat chat sprint when you are already hurting heaps. Its not as easy as it sounds to hit your maximum. But you need to find that upper limit. Most people cannot hit maximum just by themselves training, you need to be in some sort of race situation with adrenaline and fear and everything else to push you there. Anyway, find a hill, strap on the chest strap, and embrace the pain.
I'll talk about cadence and other stuff later.
PS its always nice and quiet in this room

[Derny Driver]

Okay let me begin by saying that for the experienced cyclist, heart rate and cadence are almost never used for anything in a training sense. Mind you, some guys have been riding for 15 years and I still wouldn't class them as experienced. Experience means you learn from your mistakes. Going out every day for 15 years and making the same mistake and reinforcing the same bad habit is fairly common from my observations of people I know. For yourself Gresford heart rate and cadence can help you become a better bike rider by reinforcing good habits and techniques.

Firstly, cadence is very important. Use your Garmin to monitor your cadence for about 6 months. After that your legs will instinctively dance to the correct beat and you can forget about looking at cadence ever again. This is what the numbers need to be, every ride, every time. On the flat 90-100 rpm. Up a slight hill can be less, say 75-90, down hill faster, say 100-120. But on a normal road, just riding along...something in the 90s is right. Im not interested in debating the people who want to tell me they ride around at 70, they can do that and good luck to them. Its a mistake, bad technique, and the champion cyclists don't ride like that. In a race, or a Time Trial pushing a big gear, 80-90 is best, but for general riding, keep the monitor showing something with a 9 in front. Train your legs to turn over at that cadence and you are on the way to being a great cyclist. Sounds easy but so many people cant do it because they started cycling as adults. Kids do it naturally.

Heart rate zones. Again, use them to force yourself to adopt good training habits. After 6 months you will probably not need heart rate zones any more. Basically, if I can dumb my advice down to its simplest form it is this: Either train hard - very hard, or easy. Ride at either 40kph or less than 30kph. Riding around at 33 kph in the Tempo heart rate zone is in my opinion, the worst form of training possible. I call it The Dead Zone. This is how most people ride, the typical commuter who is riding 'fast' trying to keep up some sort of average speed on his commute, trying to catch the stranger riding his bike up ahead, trying to get there fast but not so fast he will collapse at the end of the ride in a sweaty heap. Just fast tempo riding. That's crap and you must not fall into the trap or you will become like everyone else - just an average bike rider. If you actually want to improve, you must not ride like that.
Vary your rides. Most days should be quite easy riding and you must not get suckered into having a little race with a fellow commuter. That's just the ego talking. Deliberately ignore the urge to burn someone off. Just ride nice and easy. Zone 1 and 2 (see link)

On days when you want to ride hard, well go for it. Have a good hard ride and smash yourself. Or have an easy ride with some little efforts along the way. Find a nice section of road that is nice and flat and smooth and see how long you can hold 40+kph for. Give it a 5 minute effort. Or find a line or a tree on a section of road and sprint as fast as you can from there to the next telegraph pole or something, flat out. See what maximum speed or heart rate you can hit.

For a hard Time Trial effort, ride at cadence 80-90 and heart rate 88-92% max. You can go above that for short periods of time (eg up a hill) but keep it there for the most part.

Basically, if you just ride the same every day, you will never improve. Use your monitor to make some / most rides easy (below 70% HR) and others hard (85-100%). Stay out of the dead zone which is somewhere around 70-85%HR. Its okay to ride that zone sometimes but try to avoid it.

Use your heart rate monitor to give yourself a resting HR number each morning. If the number is up by 10% on any given day you are overtrained / getting sick / run down so take it very easy on those days. Also keep your monitor on after each ride for about 4 hours and see how long it takes to return to a normal rate. This sort of info is useful.

I just found this article, the zones are debatable but the author is saying roughly the same thing as me. We wont bother critiquing every sentence but the general gist is good.
http://www.bikeradar.com/au/gear/articl ... sts-28838/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[gabrielle260]

Great post DD!!
Your opening words had me wondering but what followed was pure gold.
Gresford- heed his words!
I'm a big fan of Maffetone and DD's post is very much in line with that. The pro's go really hard or really easy in training just as DD says. They just smile when Freds ride past - they don't need to prove anything against us mere mortals, they wait for race day!
Andrew

[JdM]

On the flat 90-100 rpm. Up a slight hill can be less, say 75-90, down hill faster, say 100-120. But on a normal road, just riding along...something in the 90s is right.

I'm working on getting myself in that sort of range at the moment (new cyclist), although riding around suburban Sydney which is particularly undulating with a lot of short and often sharp hills, I do find it quite difficult keep to the average cadence up over 85rpm. Guess I need to just keep trying lol, and keep spinning faster when I do get a rare-ish flat piece of road.

When you say 100-120 downhill, do you mean sort of 'soft-pedaling' in a smaller gear or absolutely letting rip? Or by asking that question have I revealed that I too casually coast down hills too often?

For the OP - a tip I've been given for using HR as a metric in the absence of having a power meter it's also useful for pacing, for instance up a climb. I have a pretty good idea where my 'red line' is HR wise from a combination of knowledge of my training zones and trial and error from feel. E.g. I've gone tearing up a hill as fast as possible a number of times to deliberately blow myself up and taken note of what sort of numbers the HR monitor is showing as I began to hit the wall. I can then use the HR monitor to keep myself away from the 'red line' in combination with my own feel for the effort I'm putting out.

(Derny Driver if you have any thoughts/contrary advice on the above would be keen to hear it)

[Calvin27]

Basically, if you just ride the same every day, you will never improve. Use your monitor to make some / most rides easy (below 70% HR) and others hard (85-100%). Stay out of the dead zone which is somewhere around 70-85%HR. Its okay to ride that zone sometimes but try to avoid it.

I'm interested in this 'dead zone'. Are you saying after the sprint you recover in less than the dead zone? Or are you saying just to not ride the entire thing in dead zone?

Genuinely interested because I pretty much ride recovery in about my dead zone.

[queequeg]

I don't bother with a HRM on my commutes, but I know when I am hammering and when I am cruising.
I have started to vary the daily commute in by adding an extra loop, or going a different way. On the usual daily route I will target a couple of short segments and just smash myself, then go back to cruising.
Every afternoon there is a 10km Time Trial on offer, and I'll go hard on that from time to time, or just cherrypick the long straight bits.

[redsonic]

Thanks DD for the informative reply, and thanks Gresford for asking the question!

[Derny Driver]

[quote="JdM"]
When you say 100-120 downhill, do you mean sort of 'soft-pedaling' in a smaller gear or absolutely letting rip? Or by asking that question have I revealed that I too casually coast down hills too often?
[quote]
Im just generalising... saying that on an easy section of road ..downhill, or tailwind ..then pedalling faster than 100 is nothing to worry about.
Most people do not pedal too fast, they pedal too slow. Having a naturally fast cadence is usually a good thing.

[Derny Driver]

Basically, if you just ride the same every day, you will never improve. Use your monitor to make some / most rides easy (below 70% HR) and others hard (85-100%). Stay out of the dead zone which is somewhere around 70-85%HR. Its okay to ride that zone sometimes but try to avoid it.

I'm interested in this 'dead zone'. Are you saying after the sprint you recover in less than the dead zone? Or are you saying just to not ride the entire thing in dead zone?

Genuinely interested because I pretty much ride recovery in about my dead zone.

The dead zone is my own term but its the type of riding most triathletes do, chugging along at 32kph in the 53-15 with a cadence of 75. Some might say thats fine because averaging 32 in an Ironman is apparently good, so this sort of thing equals good race simulation.
Again if people want to ride like that, go ahead, there are no rules.
But from my observations and in my experience this is not an optimal way to train. It is still training, there is value in it, but for me, it is minimal. If you ride like this every day, you are in a rut which is hard to break free of and which becomes a barrier to moving forward in your fitness. I am just plucking heart rates out of my head, maybe the dead zone / tempo zone is above 73% rather than 70%. Obviously your heart rate is going to be between 73 and 88% sometimes, but my point is not to ride entire rides in that zone as a habit. Lots of people do that, my advice is to be aware of it, and try to vary your speeds. There is nothing wrong with riding a little bit slower than you normally would.

[Derny Driver]

The dead zone idea is a little off topic but here is some interesting reading ...
http://www.pezcyclingnews.com/toolbox/t ... -syndrome/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[vander]

Just to throw a spanner in the works, in the last few years I have got a lot better by riding in the bottom end of this dead zone often. 70-75% (maybe a little higher) is where I spend almost all of my riding time and it has made me a lot stronger. Developed good endurance. There is my N=1.

After reading the above article the zone I am talking of is Zone 2

[Xplora]

I used to have huge issues with dead zones riding when I commuted 20kms each way plus the bunch ride. I smashed myself and I got fast, but I couldn't lift on Saturday. My first really big jump in performance was the decision to completely bitch out and spin my 34 ring home on Friday night nd ease off Wednesday afternoon as well. The brute force I could apply on Monday morning after I rested a day was too fun to pass up, and Tuesday was always a strong day too?

Anyways, I rested and I did a few days of really hard sprints. It was very little but it awoke something in the legs, and I became much stronger on the Saturday ride. I think I was recovered enough to go deep and find something for the first time in a long time.

Dead zone is very real. I am finding it easier to do more endurance work because a A or B grader can ride endurance while his D grade pals are hurting in the dead zone, although hitting VO2Max will drop them a bit quick. Quite frankly you don't get many chats or roses smelt if you are hammering and I can leave the Dickswing for The races!

[queequeg]

I used to have huge issues with dead zones riding when I commuted 20kms each way plus the bunch ride. I smashed myself and I got fast, but I couldn't lift on Saturday. My first really big jump in performance was the decision to completely bitch out and spin my 34 ring home on Friday night nd ease off Wednesday afternoon as well. The brute force I could apply on Monday morning after I rested a day was too fun to pass up, and Tuesday was always a strong day too?

Anyways, I rested and I did a few days of really hard sprints. It was very little but it awoke something in the legs, and I became much stronger on the Saturday ride. I think I was recovered enough to go deep and find something for the first time in a long time.

Dead zone is very real. I am finding it easier to do more endurance work because a A or B grader can ride endurance while his D grade pals are hurting in the dead zone, although hitting VO2Max will drop them a bit quick. Quite frankly you don't get many chats or roses smelt if you are hammering and I can leave the Dickswing for The races!

Sounds like some post ride coffee talk is in order. I don't bother with a HRM on my commutes, so maybe I should wear one for a week and see where I am. Based on feel
alone, I reckon I would be about 60% max. I am not even getting into pain threshold in the Int Plus bunch ride.

[Xplora]

I haven't worn a HRM for 6 months... just rely on the power meter. You might have a few trips due with the Gorges lads

[queequeg]

I haven't worn a HRM for 6 months... just rely on the power meter. You might have a few trips due with the Gorges lads

At least I'll match the Club Captain bike wise, but whether I can keep up with him is another story!

[Xplora]

Adjust his seatpost on the sly

[gresford]

Derny, hope the cards went well, I haven't played 500 for years.

Mate, thanks for that post, you are a legend! A few succinct paragraphs was exactly what I was hoping for.

This: Riding around at 33 kph in the Tempo heart rate zone is in my opinion, the worst form of training possible. I call it The Dead Zone. This is how most people ride, the typical commuter who is riding 'fast' trying to keep up some sort of average speed on his commute' is exactly how the last 6 months of riding have felt, I could tell I wasn't really getting anywhere. I suspected my cadence was too slow which was part of the motivation to get the Garmin. (Plus I wanted a shiny new toy).

I've decided to start simple and focus on getting cadence up for the next few weeks, I have a few weeks info on this now and my average is between 70 and 80 atm. 90-100 feels weirdly fast to spin at now but practice makes perfect and all that.

I won't get too hung up on heart rate for now until the cadence is consistently faster. Once this is on track I'll get more serious on monitoring HR. Having said that I note the advice about either go hard or rest up so will alternate the commuting days between effort and recovery. At present the effort is whatever I can summon on the day with a general tailing off on Fridays!

I've also set myself to expect to be slower before I get quicker as I adjust. Looking forward to tracking myself over the rest of the year now!!

[Alex Simmons/RST]

There's no real dead zone as far as intensity goes wrt to physiological adaptations, but there is definitely a trap of monotony.

For the OP - your post is a bit vague. You'd like to improve fitness and power for what?

Cadence per se is a bit meaningless. Unless one also knows level of effort, cadence isn't particularly useful.

It's about as useful as saying "I'm going to change the torque I ride at". But no one says that because measuring torque is hard. Measuring cadence is easy. But not everything that's measured matters.

For training to improve general fitness (and power), then some basic principles apply:
- focus on effort level and duration
- include a variety of training stimuli
- progressive sustainable overload
- recovery when required
- it's an aerobic sport (unless you are talking track sprint/bmx)
- specificity in training
- keep it fun

[Xplora]

Changing it up OP is probably going to give you the easiest way forward. You are smashing yourself all the time? Stop smashing yourself constantly, find out what happens. You might find that smashing yourself constantly is a good idea again in 3 months time... and then you'll have to ease off again after a month. But, like climbing a stair case in a skyscraper, you will go fastest being able to rest briefly in between flights so you can get higher and higher... but you need those brief breaks.

[defy1]

Thanks for the interesting topic. Do you guys think climbing mountains simulates the type of training DD mentions?

[CKinnard]

My question is can anyone please recommend a simple guide to using HRM and cadence in my training?

The guidance an 18yo gets vs a 60yo should be very very different....same for someone with a BMI of 18 vs 35....same for a myriad of medical conditions.
I know of 2 cyclists who died of heart attacks in the last 2 weeks.
And another racing in a Southern Masters Club race in Melbourne needed to be defibbed back to life...with the CC's defibrillator...how many CC's have defibs?

But I bet they didn't think it would be them.

[Derny Driver]

Thanks for the interesting topic. Do you guys think climbing mountains simulates the type of training DD mentions?

I guess my post can be summarised as being about cultivating good pedalling habits and varying your ride intensities.
Riding hard for the inexperienced rider tends to have as a consequence, lower cadence, rocking of the hips, bobbing the head up and down, stomping the pedals etc. With easier rides and the benefit of the heart-rate and cadence indicators, people can develop a smoother style which then equates to better performance later on down the track. That's my point here.

For climbing, well how about this for a nice little drill which utilises cadence. This was shown to me by a mate who was one of Australia's best climbers some years ago, winning among other things, the Tour of Bright stage up Mt Buffalo in A grade.

Find a hill with a steady gradient of 4 or 5%. Select the 39-25 gear and ride up the hill for exactly 10 minutes and keep the cadence at exactly 60rpm. Seated. Relax the upper body and rest your hands on the flat top part of the bars. You can pull back slightly but just concentrate on pedalling smoothly seated. At the 10 minute point you stop but don't turn around and descend yet, you must do 5 minutes of warm down riding before you descend. A side street is perfect for this, or a car park or something. Then descend and repeat. Do 4 climbs in the 25 cog and go home.

Try to do this twice in the week. In between do some easy flat rides.
The following week do the same but up the gear to 23.
The following week the 21.
If you cant do the 60 cadence or have to stand up, the gear is too big. Go back to the previous week's gear.

This is a fun little drill which will actually improve your general riding speed. Only do it for a few weeks. Remember to focus on relaxing the upper body, shoulders and arms. Hands on the tops. Pedal a smooth seated 60 cadence the whole way.

[defy1]

Thanks DD for the advice...I still ride a wussy compact but I get the gist of what you recommended.

[Alex Simmons/RST]

Thanks DD for the advice...I still ride a wussy compact but I get the gist of what you recommended.

Nothing wussy about compact gearing. Many riders are over geared for their abilities. 50x11 > 53x12, so that's hardly a constraint at the top end of gearing choices.