Most accurate way to test max heart rate

You don't necessarily need to know exactly what your maxHR is. And none of the tests will be 100% - even a supervised Vo2max test might not get you there if you're fatigued or mentally tired to push. In fact, for someone who is new to training a MHR test will not yield the right value, because the body will start shutting down earlier than one would achieve his/her true max value.

You would use heart rate training primarily to pace your Zones 1-3 efforts and for Zones 4-5 it's a secondary tool to track recovery between reps and how it stabilizes around threshold. High Zone 4 and Zone 5 training is best done by pace or power - heart rate would be very skewed at shorter efforts, because it doesn't climb up as quickly. But if you're interested to suffer, here are a few good tests (classic 5k, 4x2 or a ramp test) -

theathleteblog.com

3 Ways To Calculate Max Heart Rate And Why It's Needed

Andrejs

There are 3 different ways that allow athletes to calculate max heart rate with good accuracy. The most optimal of those is ...

Link:theathleteblog.com/calculate-maximum-h...

Heart rate training gets a lot of bad rap and mainly because of the 220-age formula. The idea behind it came from a very generalized study where they took thousands of people and came up with an average formula that kind of fit most people. Results represented a bell curve, as you might expect - some people had a very high max HR, some very low max HR and many in between.

Since then there were quite a few other formulas that controlled for different variables. In particular, I found this one to provide a generally more accurate number - 211 – 0.64 x Age. But estimating should be just the first step. From there you'd calculate zones (preferably, by using a Karvonen formula) - you can use this calculator

theathleteblog.com

Heart Rate Zone Calculator | The Athlete Blog

Andrejs

This heart rate zone calculator uses Karvonen formula to estimate individual heart rate training zones based on user data (email not needed).

Link:theathleteblog.com/heart-rate-zone-cal...

Max HR is really only needed to calculate sub-max zones & intensities. Use the best estimate you have now and then validate those based on perceived exertion or eventually doing a functional threshold test (40-45min all-out effort). If the average HR for that test would lie somewhere in the middle/upper end of Zone 4, then you'll know that the zones are correct. If not, adjust the theoretical max HR in the calculator for the zones to match with your functional threshold test.