Heart Rate Training

Christy Garth, Assistant Varsity Coach of the UM swim team, should know a thing or two about heart-rate training. She swam in the Olympic Trials in 2000 and competed at the University of North Carolina from 1992-1996. I asked her to describe how to do heart-rate training and here is her advice.

Take your base heart-rate every morning before you get out of bed. This is a good indicator of your training readiness and will help you decide how to train during that day. For example if you're overtrained, sick, or not getting enough rest, your heart rate may be elevated.

Heart-rates can be described using colors which correspond to the color of your skin while you're training in that "zone". For example a heart rate of 20 beats per ten seconds would be white, 22 beats - pink, 24 beats - red, 26 beats - blue, 28 beats - green, and 30 beats - black. (Yikes!)

Blocks of six weeks are often used for training periods. At the beginning of the six weeks you may stay primarily in the "white" zone. As you progress into later weeks you move into more "advanced" colors for small portions of two or three training sessions per week. If you are doing a blue, green or black set, you should allow a very large interval for your all-out effort.