 Let's suppose you are on Strava or on some other running software and you're looking at someone else's heart rate data during one of their runs and you go like, wow, look at that heart rate. He's running at whatever this kind of pace and his heart rate is just 120. When I run at that pace, my heart rate is 160 for example. Wow, he must be really fit to be able to have such a low heart rate at that pace. Well, if it was only that simple, unfortunately it isn't. Well, actually it is pretty simple but you cannot compare two different people's heart rate data to each other. And there's a very simple reason why and that's what we're going to get into in this video. Stay tuned. So heart rate, it's a really great training tool. It's a good way to gauge intensity when you're training. Although it has its limitations, you know, it's very hot, heart rate tends to go up. If you're nervous, heart rate will go up and so it's, you know, it's not a perfect tool but it is one of the best tools we have because it's very available. I like to use it for myself. I also use it for the athletes that I'm coaching and I think it's a pretty good tool. However, you cannot compare heart rate between athletes and it seems counterintuitive. A lot of people think that 140 BPM or 160 BPM is a certain intensity no matter what. But the truth is, and here's the real answer to this whole video, the truth is that heart rate is always relevant in the sense that it's a percentage of your max heart rate. Okay? So when you're trying to gauge intensity, it's not the absolute heart rate value that matters. It's how big a percentage that heart rate value is compared to your maximum heart rate. So I'll give you some examples. I have a calculator here. I'll do some quick calculations. So first of all, let's say an easy run. Okay? If someone were to run at 70% of their max, that would be considered an easy run. Okay? So, and just to make it clear, your maximum heart rate is basically the highest heart rate that you'll see when you're doing a really, really hard effort like an interval session over and over again. But typically we need to do a max heart rate test in order to know for sure there's a protocol to follow. But it's essentially the highest heart rate that you're able to achieve. So let's suppose that this theoretical person has the maximum heart rate of 200. Okay? So 200, that's their max heart rate. And we wanted to keep them running at 70% of that max heart rate. So 200 times 0.7 equals 140. Okay? So when this person is running with a heart rate of 140 BPM, that's easy. That's about 70%. Well, it's exactly 70% of their max. And everything is fine and dandy. If the same person with 200 max wanted to run, you know, like a threshold session, maybe they wanted to be at around 85% of their maximum heart rate. So 200 times 0.85 is 170. Okay? So at 140, they're running easy. At 170, they're running around threshold intensity, which is pretty hard. Now, if you take another person with a much lower maximum, for example, let's say there are people and just to give a range, maximum heart rate, they vary a lot. You cannot just use the standard formula of like 220 minus your age. That's like a statistical average. Individual variation is huge when it comes to max heart rate. So someone might be as low as 150. Other people are as high as 230 or something. I don't know. Maybe there's even more of a variation. But most people are probably somewhere between 170 and a 100, no, sorry, 200. Yeah, probably between 170 and 200. Personally, I have a 206 as a max heart rate. And it's not an indicator of fitness. Okay, so it's not like, wow, you have a high max heart rate. You must be really fit. No, no, it's genetic. And it's just that's the way it is. So it doesn't really connect to your fitness level. Although you can maintain your max heart rate by training. If you don't train at all, it will go down with age. It goes down with age regardless, but it will go down more if you don't train. All right, back to the calculation. So let's suppose now we have a person with a max heart rate of 170. Okay, 170. So at 70% of max, which was easy, right? This person would be at 119. So that's actually easy for this person. Whereas if they were running at threshold, 170 times 0.85, that's 144. Okay, so you can see now that the first person needs to run at 140 in order to keep it easy. But the other person with a lower max heart rate, when they're at 140, they're almost at their lactate threshold, which is pretty hard. So two people both running at 140 BPM heart rate. One of them is almost at their threshold. The other is running really easy. And that's just because it's the percentage of maximum that counts, not the absolute number. So you can see now how the danger of comparing heart rate between two athletes. You can never do that. You can never really gauge someone's intensity level without knowing their maximum. So if you don't know someone's maximum, you could look at their Strava data. For example, you can try and analyze, okay? They're saying in the log maybe that this was a hard work out and you look at the data and you can see that the last interval, they were sort of maxing out at 185 or something like that. You can probably assume then that their max, depending on the type of workout, if it was a VO2 max workout, you can assume that perhaps their max is around 185 or maybe 190. And then you can calculate the percentages down to gauge where they should be on an easier run, etc. But it requires some knowledge and it's pretty difficult. So really for your own training though, figure out your max and we can get into that in another video. If you want to have some help maybe to do a max heart rate test, please just contact me. I have a website, there's a link in the description where I offer coaching. We can do a consultation. I can explain the max heart rate test to you or we can create a training program or whatever. But by knowing your max heart rate, you can then just calculate the percentages of max that you need to be at the various intensities. And that's a really important thing to do actually to stay in the right intensity zone at the right time because that's really key if you want to get proper training adaptations. Anyway, that's all long video for a short, simple topic. But it's an important thing to talk about though because we tend to compare ourselves to others and as a coach as well I always constantly have to analyze people's training and without knowing their max it's difficult to gauge their heart rate data. Anyway, check out my link in the description with the coaching that I offer. Read more about it on my website. Subscribe to this channel of course and if you have any questions send me a message on Loan Endurance, the Facebook page or my website or post a comment down on this video or whatever, something like that. Thanks for watching. Have an awesome day. See ya.