Heart rate adaptation

[dieselrower1k]

Almost suddenly, my HR has dropped in response to the same recent workouts, especially in the UT1 zone. I have to really push to get above 70% during UT1 SS rows. Is this a normal adaptation, or has age (I'm 59) finally caught up with me? My max HR has maintained in the high 180's to low 190's.

[ltwt1x]

If you are fit SS is never easy. Once I started getting lactate tested I learned I needed to go much harder on the SS than what I would have thought. Even at like 1.2 mmol I doesn't feel easy or conversational to me

[Steven M-M]

Perhaps there is some confusion on zones: UT2 is the basic SS zone, 55-70% of max, the one that should be "conversational." UT1 is a step up, just below AT. The Brit national team also does UT3 workouts, v long, v low (I think). As I understand it, one mistake us not-elite athletes make is we train too hard on long, slow days (e.g. UT1 not UT2) and not hard enough on hard days.

[beagle]

Using a standard % of max doesn't work. If SS is not easy, you're metabolically screwed.

[sandor]

it could also be a sign of in-adequate recovery or illness.

in a vacuum of information, it is difficult to do anything but guess at the cause.

how is your resting heart rate trending? (ie lowest overnight, if you track, or heart rate first thing upon waking, before getting out of bed)

[beagle]

Agreed. Track your RHR. Pay attention to spikes.

[KiwiCanuck]

Is your resting heart rate regular and steady?
If it is, not a big deal. If the resting HR is variable... Might pay to have an ECG?


Long ago I was coaching a fellow who couldn't get his HR up during a workout, couldn't push hard, couldn't get his splits down, couldn't make his legs burn, when normally he was a really hard worker with good ergo splits. When I felt his pulse (with his permission) I went to the phone, called his father and suggested he get an ECG because the pulse rate was changing from beat-to-beat, from tachycardia to "normal" to slow, to fast, to slow.... Turned out he had atrial fibrillation - bad enough, at 19 years old, to get a pacemaker installed...

[boston_1x]

I'm 56 and have been training with/watching HR since the mid 90s. There are a few parts to your question... age-related decline, heart rate zones relative to that, and other quirky stuff. So yeah, HRmax slides with age... and AT and AnT zones move around sometimes because of training (over/under), illness, injury, efficiency in the boat... and zones are not exact because it is a complex system.

I think the real question you might be asking is, "am I stuck with it?" IMO this is the great game of masters sports... beating Time. If you are declining 1-2pct/year in HRmax, can you break down and find 1-2pct cumulative improvement in everything else to offset it. Absolutely. This is the over-sold Marginal Gains theory out of GBR... but it works. I started seeing HRmax drops 15yrs ago and have managed to stay at rough same speed. If you play this game for 10+ years, it starts to really add up.

I also think it is important if your SS # seems to be shifting to actually pay some attention to figuring it out properly 3-4x/year. Re SS: I do a couple of lactate tests during erg season; and then some interval sets on the water in the 1x with progressive speed bumps, looking for inflection point in HR on the recovery (can post graph if of interest). Then just make a big long list of all the stuff you can do better, keep the rate capped at SS, and work on 2-3 things that are at the top of the list month by month. It actually is sort of fun

[Steven M-M]

Indirectly related: https://nyti.ms/2IMz996

Don't you love it when someone who actually knows what their talking about says the same thing you say:

From the NYT's piece:

"Q. What are some tips you learned from the athletes you profiled that the average person could adopt?

A. Trent Stellingwerff, a sports scientist and coach, had a piece of advice that I think is so simple and so powerful. He said the biggest mistake that most athletes make is they train too easy on their hard days, and too hard on their easy days."

[Stelph]

I also think it is important if your SS # seems to be shifting to actually pay some attention to figuring it out properly 3-4x/year. Re SS: I do a couple of lactate tests during erg season; and then some interval sets on the water in the 1x with progressive speed bumps, looking for inflection point in HR on the recovery (can post graph if of interest). Then just make a big long list of all the stuff you can do better, keep the rate capped at SS, and work on 2-3 things that are at the top of the list month by month. It actually is sort of fun

I’d seen a study that confirmed a protocol for a concomitant test for rowing that accurately measures VT2

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3761509/

As stated in the article, VT2 correlates well with MLSS so training just below this intensity is supposed to bring big gains in aerobic fitness

I did wonder about whether you would change the test when you had a power meter (ie the NK) - the protocol of the test in the paper is to start at 18 and then increase the rate 2 each minute till failure, but with a power meter you could instead aim for wattage increases - though I’m not sure if you’d also aim to increase rate as well or try and stick to the same rate for the whole workout

[sandor]

I also think it is important if your SS # seems to be shifting to actually pay some attention to figuring it out properly 3-4x/year. Re SS: I do a couple of lactate tests during erg season; and then some interval sets on the water in the 1x with progressive speed bumps, looking for inflection point in HR on the recovery (can post graph if of interest). Then just make a big long list of all the stuff you can do better, keep the rate capped at SS, and work on 2-3 things that are at the top of the list month by month. It actually is sort of fun

I’d seen a study that confirmed a protocol for a concomitant test for rowing that accurately measures VT2

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3761509/

As stated in the article, VT2 correlates well with MLSS so training just below this intensity is supposed to bring big gains in aerobic fitness

I did wonder about whether you would change the test when you had a power meter (ie the NK) - the protocol of the test in the paper is to start at 18 and then increase the rate 2 each minute till failure, but with a power meter you could instead aim for wattage increases - though I’m not sure if you’d also aim to increase rate as well or try and stick to the same rate for the whole workout

They used heart rate, stroke rate & boat speed.
I would think substituting watts for boat speed would be more accurate & would alleviate the effects of outside forces over a 12-15 minute test.

My question, which i was hoping they would address in the discussion, was how stroke rate may influence the heart rate/deflection point.

I would expect a collection of international oarsmen who have been training for a quadrennial would be at a fitness level to produce the results as published, so it would be interesting to see the same study carried out with recreational level athletes to see if the results are as reproducible.

[track_bites]

Re SS: I do a couple of lactate tests during erg season; and then some interval sets on the water in the 1x with progressive speed bumps, looking for inflection point in HR on the recovery (can post graph if of interest).

I'd be very interested in your test protocol and the resulting graph. I'm looking for a better way to confirm appropriate steady state intensity for OTW workouts.

Thanks