I'm 62. I've been up to 182 or so.
Someone told me that it's closer to accurate to do 220-30 minus 4 beats per decade.
That puts me at 178.
I just don't see how a 20 year old who is obese would have a higher max than a 62 year old who started running at the age of 12 and has put on 3 lbs since high school.
JD nails it, as usual.
You should rather use [211 - 0.64 x Age]. It was the best approximation based on 3300 healthy individuals between 19 and 89 years of age.
You're an outlier either way, but less so: 211 - 0.64 x 73 = 164.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1600-0838.2012.01445.x
sloe joe wrote:
During my graduate studies, we brought in many runners and were able to confirm these HRs for these runners on multiple occasions:
17 yo male (220-17 = 203 predicted) had a HRmax of 168 (-35 bpm). He was a pretty good athlete, sub 9:40 2-mile if i remember correctly....
21 yo female NCAA div1 runner (220-21 = 199 predicted) had a HRmax of 218 (+19 bpm). This was the highest we had ever seen using our laboratory equipment
Wow! I had a MHR of 212 during a VO2 max test at age 21.
I'm the OP. Years ago, Max HR was explained to me this way by a doctor.
Some people have big diesel hearts. Some people have little Kawasaki hearts. The big hearts beat slower. The little hearts beat faster. There's no advantage either way.
From a fitness perspective, what matters is how close to MHR you can run without becoming anaerobic. Sadly for me, it's not very close at all anymore!
There are at least EIGHT newer, better, more statistically researched formulas than the ancient 220 formula
How the hell can you be an author of anything giving advice and not know this or not take 10 seconds to find out?
Do you even know it's physically impossible to increase max HR? It's wired into your genetics.
Here you lazy sob, now go learn why max HR doesn't even matter and it's your LT1 and LT2 HR thresholds that count.
It's very individual - I'm 64 and have a top of 165 and highest I've reached lately is 158 for the last rep of 8x1000m with 90 sec. recovery.
My sister is 61 and she it 191 and averaged over 170 in a 1500m recently.
My steady/recovery type run is under 120, and I have a friend who is 66 and would probably be about 40 beats higher (he runs up to 170+ on a steady run at times).
I'm 61 and I have data that goes back to when I was 22 and set my marathon PR. I've been running since I was about 15 years old competitively. My max HR was 193 and today it is 185. So my max HR is about 26 beast higher than one would expect using the formula. To avoid injuries I don't do much top end running so it is possible that my max HR is even higher than 185. Extremely fit older athletes (at least extremely fit relative to the general population) probably do not see their max HR dropping much as they age. I would not obsess that much about max HR though. At one point I ran with a group of about 8 at work and we were all similar in terms of race results but the max HR in our group varied from 220 down to 160. I pay more attention to resting HR as I think it is a better indicator of fitness
OP is so proud of himself.
Listen. maxHR = 220-age is a rule of thumb. It varies enormously, just as resting heartrate does.
For well-trained people, maxHR does not degrade over time as much as it does for inactive people. MaxHR 190-200 is common in masters runners.
Has anyone on this board read anything about exercise physiology, ever?
Mine is pretty close actually. should be around 203 (17) and I've gotten close to around 205-206 on hills in this summer heat and humidity
is your google broken? wrote:
There are at least EIGHT newer, better, more statistically researched formulas than the ancient 220 formula
How the hell can you be an author of anything giving advice and not know this or not take 10 seconds to find out?
Do you even know it's physically impossible to increase max HR? It's wired into your genetics.
Here you lazy sob, now go learn why max HR doesn't even matter and it's your LT1 and LT2 HR thresholds that count.
https://goodcalculators.com/heart-rate-calculator/
???
Wow. You might want to switch to decaf! Of course, I know that the formula can be way off. Of course, I know you can't increase max HR and that LTHR is what really matters.
The purpose of my post was to see how far 220-age might be off for some Letsrunners, since it is still widely cited as a way to determine Max HR.
Since you brought it up, the book has an entire chapter on better ways to use a HRM than the 220-age formula. Here's an excerpt.
...the formula 220 minus age. At best, this only gives a ballpark number for maximum heart rate. For some runners, it’s way off. For example, at age 50, my maximum heart rate was 190. The formula 220 minus age would’ve given me a maximum heart rate of 170. That’s an error of 20 bpm—far too much to provide any meaningful training zones. Interestingly, at age 70 my max heart rate is 186, a whopping 36 bpm error if I went by the 220 minus age formula!
I explain some better ways to determine Max HR and then add that Max HR isn't really what runners need to know.
The most important number you need to know in using a heart rate monitor is not your MHR. That number is only used to calculate training zones, which in themselves are merely approximations and can vary widely depending on your fitness level. The most important number is your lactate threshold heart rate (LTHR)—the maximum heart rate you can maintain without moving into the anaerobic zone.
Anyway, it looks like the widest error so far is the 70-year-old with a 52 beat difference!
Back in the dawn of time (in my early 30s) I was measured at 227 bpm by Dr. Dave Martin in his lab during a max stress test and held that for 90 seconds. I had a 185 bpm at marathon pace, which in theory should have been fully aerobic. Individual differences do happen.
is your google broken? wrote:
There are at least EIGHT newer, better, more statistically researched formulas than the ancient 220 formula
How the hell can you be an author of anything giving advice and not know this or not take 10 seconds to find out?
Do you even know it's physically impossible to increase max HR? It's wired into your genetics.
Here you lazy sob, now go learn why max HR doesn't even matter and it's your LT1 and LT2 HR thresholds that count.
https://goodcalculators.com/heart-rate-calculator/
Chil bro. Anyways, you wrong. All the heart rate numbers are variable dpending on plasma volume and hematological status.
Lowest I've heard of is Lionel Sanders.
He's 33, and his max is around 163 I believe. There is a video of him on YouTube TTing a 5K and his HR displayed in real time. It tops out at about 160BPM. At the end of a 5K you are about 1-3BPM from max HR, if fully recovered.
I'm 55. I regularly target 155 to 174 bpm with a strap. 165 is nothing like max. I can hold the last 4 of 6 miles around there. On harder things I'll go up to 172- 178 purposefully, but in the last week i've been in the 180s and above some, but prefer not to hit over 180 for much. Anyway I guess my max by formula should be 165 bpm. Above ~184-186 I tend to get more chaotic readings but certainly I can do the last 2k of a 3k at ~174 bpm or over. (Though I tend to think this is nearly unnecesssary and mostly hold back and try to be patient and adapt, Well I debate this with myself. I basically think i should have access to two miles at the finish over 170 but try not to go over 178.) instead of purposefully going into the 180s where I might then see numbers in the 190s and 200s which I have a hard time believing are accurate.
By feel. The efforts I am doing that result in 165, 174, and 184 feel very much like they did nearly 20 years ago. If I have lost access to heart rates in the last 20 years I doubt I have lost more than 5 bpm. The speeds I can go at these heartrates is of course variable. Since I tend to be in and out of injury enough, that progress is nothing like linear, And right now the heart rates I'm getting at 6;10 pace for 2 miles should get me well under 5;40 pace. but it's a bit of a waiting game. Hopefully in 2 more months It will be a tiny bit better.
Tastes Like Chicken wrote:
I spent some time looking into heart rate max formulae 10 or so years ago. At the time, everyone seemed to agree on three things. First, the traditional formula is really, really wrong. (Even the guys who came up with it agree; they point out that it was fine for their purposes, but not as a general formula.) Second, as we see, MHR is all over the place. Third, recovery heart rate -- how quickly your heart rate drops after vigorous exercise -- is an important indicator of health.
Here's a better formula, based on lab tests using only non-smokers w/out heart disease who are not on meds that affect heart rates:
209.6 - .72(Age) for men,
207.2 - .65(Age) for women.
Figure Two in their article is a scatter plot of MHR and age. The spread is huge.
https://www.jacc.org/doi/full/10.1016/S0735-1097%2800%2901054-8
I get 161.36 which is a max exertion range for me. very close to what I see on my heart rate monitor when really busting it.
When I was 16 I once got my pulse to 264. So that was a 60 year discrepancy: I should have been -44, not +16.
30 bpm or so, until I did a max test in early 30s age
216 at age 52.
Well I am almost 68 and I have hit 190+ heart rate and in hard races and runs have averaged as high as the 170's to 180's. All my life the maximun heart rate average has been useless for me. BTW: My resting heart rate is around 52 or 4 beats a minute more than when I was 28.