220-age heart rate formula. What's the what's the widest deviation you've heard of?

Anyone?

Not that deviant but I’m 36 and hit 210 the other day blowing up in a high dew point VO2 max workout. This was chest strap measured so not official.

Ran with a teammate with max of 158. All American. He was as 20.

I'm 71 and still hit 195-201 on hill sprints. Max steady state on longer hard intervals is around 185. Those numbers are essentially unchanged since I first used an HR monitor in my early 40s.

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

Funny, I hit 184 on a hill today with a high dew point. I'm 47 and am almost positive I can get it up to 200 still.

Had a 21 year old teammate who had a HRM of 216

Earl Fee. MHR 190 at age 90.

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'm 49 so by that formula my max would be 220 - 49 = 171. I have hit 175-176 a few times recently during work outs. By the wrist-based HR monitor on my watch. I might have another bpm or two in me. I also am a habitual user of cannabis so that might affect it. This evening I did 8x400 on a track and hit 176.

By that I get 174.32 which is pretty close.

I had a teammate in high school with a max of about 170. We all tried to stay at 140-160 for easy runs and he kept clicking all his easy days off at like 5:50-6:30 pace. We thought mans was about to be a 14:30 guy. Actually turned out to be a 16:45 guy that was accidentally overtraining

I am also 51 and just finished a 72 minute MTB race with an average HR of 179.

220-age is an outdated and lazy formula for trained athletes.

Side note, my RHR is 42.

Mine was in the low 180's as a young adult and it is still there as a soon to be senior. citizen.

Resting heart rate in the mid 40's recently on 25 MPW + cross training. I am less fit and 20 pound heavier now ,so not sure if it's that low anymore but it's low.

I'm 58,

Hit 181 on the bike trainer a few weeks ago. Max is probably 3-4 beats higher.

not only is the 220 - and the new one above both about ten out for me (too low), but the hr levels are also way to low for my max hr, even using a max hr - rhr formula.

i asked a uk national level coach about this and he just said; people are different.

so i invent my own hr levels and they seem to work alogngside the similarly invented garmin/ strava metrics and body feel, so all good.

(so far)

Frequently 186 @ 56, optical confirmed by hand timing

when I was 28, recorded 225hr in a 3 x300m session.

OP will like this video - Daniels on HR training

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJZSjwJKLxA