Bytagand the publication "The different training intensities"
What are the different exercise intensity zones? What do they correspond to in terms of sensations and number of heartbeats per minute? Or beneficial effects on physical condition? Here are some questions that we will try to answer and that may help you better understand some of our other articles dedicated to training.
By Guillaume Judas – Photos: Pixabay / Maratona Dles Dolomites / 3bikes / DR
This is an article for inexperienced endurance athletes, to cyclists and triathletes who ride, run or swim by feel, and who have few tools or knowledge to get the most out of their investment in the sport. So that they know what we mean when they hear "active recovery", " endurance", "threshold", "PMA" (or VMA for runners), "power" or "watts", or even "ESIE scale" (Subjective Scale of Intensity of Effort). Don't worry, this last term corresponds to something very easy to understand in the increase in the intensity of the exercise.
How to calibrate the intensity of the effort?
The intensity of the effort is calibrated in different ways. First, sensations. And/or with a heart rate monitor (which measures the number of heartbeats each minute), and/or with a power sensor (which measures the watts supplied when pedaling).
The sensations
Because we are all endowed with a minimum of practical intelligence, and despite some very legitimate management errors when you start out, you quickly understand how to manage an effort depending on its length and your physical possibilities at the timeIt is with this in mind that the coach today, worldwide reconFrédéric Grappe developed the ESIE scale in 1999. It is a seven-level graduation of what you feel when making an effort, and named from I1 (Intensity 1) to I7 (Intensity 7). These are terms used today by all cycling coaches.
- I1 : light intensity, easy effort in relaxation, easy conversation, corresponding to < 50% of the power at PMA (maximum aerobic power), or < 75% of the FC (heart rate) Max. Training objective: long hours of effort, relaxation, regeneration.
- I2 : medium intensity, corresponding to a pure endurance effort, no muscle pain, easy conversation, fatigue occurring after 3/4 hour of prolonged effort, 50 to 65% of PMA and 75 to 85% of Max FC. Training goal: increase in endurance level, active elimination of waste.
- I3 : sustained intensity, appearance of muscular tension, difficult conversation, exhaustion over 2 hours, 65 to 75% of PMA, 85 to 92% of Max HR. Training objective: to maintain the average level of intensity of a test over time without difficulty.
- I4 : critical intensity, progressive increase in muscle pain, very difficult conversation, exhaustion from 20 minutes, 75 to 80% of PMA, 92 to 96% of FC Max. This is the pace of a 20-minute time trial, or what is called the anaerobic threshold intensity. Training objective: to withstand the high intensities of the competition, or the difficulties (elevation) of the course.
- I5 : over-critical intensity, very rapid and quickly unbearable increase in muscle pain, very complicated conversation, exhaustion between 3 and 7 minutes, around 100% of PMA and between 96 and 100% of FC Max. This is the appearance of a climb at full speed. Or what we call PMA. Training objective: increase the pain tolerance threshold (for key phases of an event, follow or make the difference).
- I6 : sub-max intensity, extreme suffering during exercise, close to nausea, exhaustion between 30 seconds and 1 minute, around 150% of PMA, non-significant HR. Training goal: lactate tolerance (punching abilities, hill sprinting).
- I7 : maximum intensity, impression of an effort in apnea, very short, no muscle pain, hyperventilation at the end of the exercise, maximum effort of 7 to 10 seconds, peak power or 250% of PMA, HR not significant. Training objective: develop maximum strength, improve movement skills).
Heart rate measurement
Heart rate (indicated as the number of heart beats per minute) is the indirect reflection of your body's activity level. Each movement or effort involves a need for energy from the muscles, provided by a greater blood flow.. It is the heart that is responsible for increasing this flow, by pumping more or less quickly to send the blood loaded with oxygen to the muscles, which involves variations in its beating frequency.
Each movement or effort involves a need for energy from the muscles, provided by a greater blood flow
After a test of effort in the laboratory or by crossing the data from your experiment, you can use the heart rate as a kind of regulator to calibrate the intensity of the exercise, and with regard to the HR zones mentioned in the previous paragraph. However, it should not be forgotten that This method is less accurate than a power sensor, because there is a time lag between the start and the end of an exercise with the increase or decrease in heart rate, and because external factors can lead to what is called cardiac drift (temperature, altitude, dehydration, infection, etc.). The fact remains that The heartbeat display provides quite good information on the energy sources used, and helps with effort management.
The heart is a muscle that ensures blood circulation, and like any muscle it develops and maintains itself. With training, the heart sees its volume and weight increase, with a thickening which causes an increase in flow capacity and an economy (slowing of the beats) for a given intensity.. To ensure vital functions, its size and power also allow it to provide more blood flow with each beat at rest. The resting heart rate therefore decreases with regular training for an endurance sport. A sedentary person has a resting heart rate of around 70 bpm (beats per minute), when a high-level athlete in an endurance sport can drop below 40 bpm.
This heart rate represents an index of your fitness, as long as you have some references. There are no absolute rules in the field, but a variation in individual resting heart rate provides information on good adaptation to training (whether it drops or remains stable), or on the contrary on the onset of fatigue or overtraining, or even on an infection (if it increases).
Heart rate and energy systemsThe energy needed by muscles is provided by the biological transformation of ingested and stored food, and mainly glucose which is retained in a particular form in the muscles and the liver, glycogen. But the degradation of fatty acids (lipids) also allows the synthesis of energy usable by the cells. For this energy source to be transformed into fuel, it needs oxygen. Everything is immediately converted into ATP (Adenosine Triphosphate). ATP is the main source of energy directly usable by the cell. Depending on the intensity of the effort, the body does not use the same energy substrates and does not produce ATP in the same way. The first energy pathway (and the main one in endurance sports) is called the aerobic pathway., and creates ATP using oxygen, and by breaking down glycogen and fatty acids. This pathway produces little waste in the body and its limits depend on VO2Max (Maximum Volume of Oxygen Consumption) and glycogen reserves. The other two energy pathways are lactic anaerobic and alactic anaerobic. The first produces ATP by breaking down glycogen exclusively, but also by producing lactic acid, itself responsible for muscular acidosis, which quickly limits activity (rarely beyond 2 to 3 minutes at this very critical intensity). The second produces ATP by breaking down phosphocreatine, present in very small quantities in the body, for short and explosive efforts of a few seconds. Fortunately, phosphocreatine reserves are reconare quickly formed, in a few minutes. Glycogen, on the other hand, is not recondoes not take place for several hours, which explains why the management of effort and reserves is so important. For the anaerobic alactic system, heart rate is absolutely not significant (power in watts, yes!). It is a little more significant for the anaerobic lactic system, but the duration and intensity of the effort depend on glycogen reserves (which decrease at high speed) and the ability to withstand acidosis. Clearly, you have very few cartridges during a training session or a race. It is especially within the aerobic system that heart rate is important, because according to Fick's principle (1870), it is directly related to oxygen consumption. In other words, Monitoring heart rate and ensuring it remains within desired values helps manage energy potential on long-term events or training. Glycogen is the first fuel used during exercise, and it is also the most effective. But reserves are limited, unlike fatty acids, a less effective fuel but which allows you to go very far. Improving physical condition through regular training and adaptations of the body makes it possible to push back the threshold (in intensity, power, heart rate) from which limited glycogen reserves are used in favor of fat reserves. |
| The so-called “reserve” heart rate Training has little impact on maximum heart rateThis is individual and can vary greatly from one individual to another. It decreases with age. There are several formulas for calculating maximum heart rate, the most famous of which is the famous 220 – age for a man and 226 – age for a woman (for example for a 40 year old man: 220 – 40 = 180 bpm maximum heart rate). This is just an indication, the best is to carry out a test field, which consists of performing a progressive acceleration after warming up, up to the maximum of one's capacities over 3 to 5 minutes, and finally noting the heart rate at the end of the effort. You can then note your reserve heart rate, which is calculated by subtracting the maximum rate from the resting rate. (for example 180 – 50 = 130). This is where you target a heart rate that corresponds to an energy channel to be favored during the session. The so-called Karvoven formula allows you to calculate it by multiplying the reserve heart rate by the percenttage desired intensity, and adding the resting frequency. To take the example of our 40-year-old athlete with a maximum frequency of 180 and a resting frequency of 50, to ride at 85% of maximum capacity, the calculation is as follows: 130 (reserve HR) x 0,85 (target intensity) + 50 (resting HR) = 160 bpm. |
Measuring power
Finally, the power sensor is the reference tool for professionals or cyclists and triathletes who are fully invested in their discipline. The principle is the same as for sensations or heart rate concerning energy sectors, but the device is more precise and directly shows the production of the effort at a given time TIt allows you to precisely manage an effort in a race or in training depending on the sector you wish to work on, or depending on your qualities.
The reference value is the PMA, or the Maximum Aerobic Power, which is the power (in watts) at which the cyclist reaches his maximum oxygen consumption. It is the same as the VMA (in speed) in running. It is also the maximum power that you can maintain over an effort of approximately 5 minutes. But each level of intensity corresponds to a power value depending on the individual level, and provides information on the qualities and possibilities of the athlete. We then speak of Record Power Curve (power records achieved as a function of the duration of the effort), which can show that a rider is more of a sprinter than an endurance rider (with a very high maximum power, but a relatively low power over long efforts), or that another has very strong dispositions for the time trial with a power over 20 minutes very high compared to his maximum power. But we will come back to this soon!
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Bytagand the publication "The different training intensities"
