Hey guys, trying to work out my max HR, and getting confused.

I'm 24 so my mhr should be around 196 if you do the 220 - age.

I was told a more accurate way to do it is find a steep hill, warm up then run up the hill giving maximum effort, walk back down and repeat 5 or 6 times(if you can manage it) and the mhr you acheive during this will be your actual mhr.

I done this and only reached 172.

I also went to a spin class and one 176 was my max.

On the cross trainer I went full pelt for 10mins and had to stop to be sick and my heart rate was still in the low 170's

So does this mean my mhr is say 180bpm?

I'm 16st(slightly under) and carry 22% bf.
I am reasonably fit. Do alot of weights and have done for the last 2 years, but recently I've been getting more and more into cardio in an attempt to shed the gut.

When I go out running my hr sits at about 150+(this is at a comfortable pace), When I hit a steep hill its upto the 160's.

It doesn't take my HR long to drop down, infact when I was doing the above hill running to find my mhr, it was taking about 30 seconds to drop from 170 to 120.

Can anyone shed some light on the matter for me?

The best and safeset way is probably an incremental maximal test (bleep test, step test on the rower etc..) I've always found 5-a-side to elicit the highest max HR for me though. Your hill sprint idea sounds good. Your max HR may be limited by other factors i.e. your legs may fatigue more quickly than you heart and lungs when doing a spin class so you might not be able to get to max effort.

I was thinking that my legs might be the problem. As I said I haven't done a massive amount of cardio, started about 2 months ago. I know my heart and lungs are strong from doing heavy deadlifts, squats and clean & press.

Should I just stick to doing the cardio for a couple more months then trying to work out my mhr?

ORIGINAL: Geo84
*snip*
On the cross trainer I went full pelt for 10mins and had to stop to be sick and my heart rate was still in the low 170's
*snip*
Can anyone shed some light on the matter for me?

Sure, you're not used to doing maximum effort work, so your body decides to stop before your heart is doing what it's capable of. Maximum effort work is a combination of experience doing that sort of thing and willpower to drive yourself hard enough.

My Journal

BP 155 (150 recently)
DL 250
SQ 185

Sure, you're not used to doing maximum effort work, so your body decides to stop before your heart is doing what it's capable of. Maximum effort work is a combination of experience doing that sort of thing and willpower to drive yourself hard enough.


So do you recommend I just stick with it, and it should start to increase?

i used to do a kingcycle test when i was cycling years ago which measured max hr, power output etc and it was hard.
without that i used to get my max hr by using a turbo on the bike then after a warm up do 2 mins on each gear to at around 100rpm then change up a gear until finally you could go no more and i got to my max hr i had someone record the results for me and i done this several times during the year which let me know how i was training and progressing etc.
i always used a polar hr monitor and even put my results on to my computer.
hope this helps its just another way of testing it.

bad things happen to everybody- its how you cope with it that matters