Exercise puzzlement

I bought a cross trainer a few months ago and love it. I exercise about 45 minutes a day and, using my snazzy Polar heart rate monitor, can see it gets my pulse rate going into the aerobic zone pretty effectively.

But I have to push my heartrate beyond my max to start getting out of breath. What gives with that? I’m hardly superfit so I doubt it’s that I have amazing lung capacity. In fact ,I find running outdoors completely knackers me out very quickly.

My worry is that without greatly taxing my lungs, I’m not burning as many calories on my cross trainer as the equipment thinks I am.

Thoughts? Advice?

I’ve found the recommended ‘zone’ to also be too low for myself. The ellipticals at the gym tell me to keep around 125-130 bpm (200lbs, 36yo.). I purposely tell it I’m only 24 years old so it puts my zone around 158 bpm where I breathe deeper and sweat more.

As far as I know, there’s no particular science backing up the zones that go on posters all over various gyms. The max heart rate formula that’s touted as gospel is also just a quick & dirty estimate for sedentary individuals. Don’t worry about it too much.

How are you determining your training zone? If you’re just using your age (which is what your Polar HRM or your cross-training machine calculates automatically) that’s just an estimate. Also, you can work out a lot higher than your “aerobic” zone without falling over from a heart attack.

If you really want to know your own personal maximum heart rate and training zone, you want to get an exercise stess test, where they hook you up to an EKG and you walk or run on a treadmill. Along with the test you can probably get a consultation on where you should be training to get the results you want.

If you don’t want to do that, you can certainly push your heart rate a little above the “aerobic zone.” Pay attention to your body. You want to you feel like you’re working hard but it still feels good. EASE OFF if you feel any pain or discomfort, or you feel like you can’t get enough air. You should be able to find a comfortable but challenging zone to work in. A heart-rate monitor can be a great tool for training, as long as you’r paying attention to both your HRM and your body.

The calorie readout on your cross-training machine is not to be trusted, BTW. Even if the machine were precisely calibrated, which it probably isn’t, the variation from one person to another makes it more or less useless.

I am not a doctor or a physical trainer, but I did the whole stress-test thhing, and I work out at about 10 BPM above my official “aerobic” zone, because that’s where I find that I have the most energy.

Thankyou for your replies!

I exercise at 140-150 bpm (30 years old) and it does make me sweat and feel tired afterwards. I just don’t get out of breath or even need to breathe that hard doing it.

I think different people have different meanings for “out of breath,” but when you work out, you should breathe hard, at least for part of the workout, but you should not be gasping for breath or feel any pain in your lungs.

If you’re interested in varying your workout, you could try doing some intervals. Increase your pace, or resistance, or whatever to raise your effort level for, say, 1 minute, to get your heart rate and breathing rate a little higher, then recover at your usual pace for 2 minutes, until your heart rate drops down to your usual range, and repeat. Interval workouts allow you to burn more calories and improve strength and endurance and aerobic capacity.