Heart rate zones and VO2 max calculator
Your data
A measured maximum beats any formula. If you have one from a test or from a hard race, type it and the estimate steps aside.
Results
Maximum heart rate in use
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| What the other formula would say | — |
| Reserve, the room between resting and maximum | — |
| Rough estimate of your VO2 max | — |
Training zones
| Zone | Percentage | Beats per minute |
|---|
Five zones is a convention, not a law of the body: coaches and watch makers draw them differently, and none of it replaces how the effort actually feels. The estimate of VO2 max here is driven almost entirely by your resting rate, so treat it as an order of magnitude.
Which formula for maximum heart rate should I use?
The one you measured, if you have it. Neither formula knows anything about you beyond your age, and people of the same age differ by a lot.
Between the two on offer, they cross exactly at forty years old and pull apart on both sides: at twenty, 220 minus your age says six beats more than the other one, at sixty it says six less, at eighty twelve less. The formula everybody memorised is the one that misses hardest on the young and the old.
Why do my zones change when I switch the method?
Because one of them counts from zero and the other counts from your resting rate. For a thirty five year old resting at sixty, the bottom of zone one comes out at 92 beats one way and 122 the other, a gap of thirty.
At the top of zone five the two meet exactly, because there the share reaches one hundred percent and the resting rate stops mattering. So the choice of method barely touches your hard sessions and completely redraws your easy ones, which is the opposite of what most people assume.
How good is the VO2 max here?
It is an order of magnitude, not a measurement. The estimate is 15.3 times the maximum divided by the resting rate, so it is driven almost entirely by the resting number: keeping the maximum at 183 and moving the resting rate from 45 to 75 takes the answer from 62 down to 37.
A laboratory test measures oxygen; this multiplies two pulses. Useful to follow your own trend as your resting rate falls, not to compare yourself with somebody else.
Why five zones?
Because it is the most widespread convention, not because the body has five gears. Coaches and watch makers draw three, five or seven, and they do not agree on the boundaries either.
What the zones are for is keeping easy days easy. If the number and the feeling disagree, the feeling is the one that has been measuring you all your life.
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