Nope, listen again. Best case, you can reverse (partialy) the decline.
The amount of time spent close to, or at maxHR, is trainable, but not the maxHR value.
Hey Passero,
First, congrats on making a big step towards a new you, better health, and longevity!!! Next, as a newbie, you shouldn’t worry about any quantitative stuff for the moment. You are not fit for serious tests and can do more damage than good by jumping into these too early. At this point, the main readouts of your cycling efforts should be your heart rate and perceived exertion level. As far as your weight issues go, cycling alone will not do much good without adjusting your nutrition (as you already do) and other life habits (sleep, stress, mobility during the day). Take it slow - you push yourself hard, you will lose the momentum and drive as you will be exceeding your physical capacity leading to a range of negative effects that will circle back to reduced enjoyment of the sport and abandonment of your efforts to get yourself back. You’ll need to create a small calorie deficit initially such that you don’t rebound and because one pound of fat is roughly 3000 cal, it will take time. Make an effort to reduce sugary stuff from your diet, animal fats, reduce alcohol intake (beer, whine, liqours will never let your reach your goals). Therefore, follow and learn about your HR - what values you hit and how does your body and mind respond at different levels. If you persist, you will see massive gains over time. For example, although it is mostly true that max HR is largely determined by the combination of age and genetics (although not as much as VO2max), better physical health will uncover your HR reserves. You’ve seen others here describing their experiences with increased max HR and I can confirm that. Not that you will be re-writing what is in your genes but you will get back to your proper levels. Once you have a good idea of where you are with your cardiovascular, then you can start paying attention to other means of quantifying your efforts, mostly power. But this should and will come in the picture later.
I can go on and on but will stop here. Suffice to say that you can always ask me and others for advice. Also, I would suggest to check Kinetic Cycling Coaching videos from Scott McLean on YouTube (Kinetic Cycle Coaching - YouTube) - unlike most “coaches” out there, he focuses on health and long term goals that should fit you well, not just to boost your FTP that should be used only to help atheletes to set their proper training zones, esp Z2. There are many amazingly strong riders with massive FTP numbers but they still don’t win one-day or three-week rides.
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There’s some excellent advice here which I will take into account while training.
To give some background about myself. I love running, but because of my weight, running puts to much strain on my joints, which can result in injuries. I tried a few times in the past (the last time two years ago), and initially, it went well, but after a few months, I always developed an injury that can be traced back to my weight.
A few months ago, I went to see a doctor and asked for advice since I really enjoy running and I want to do it healthily. The doctor recommended trying a different sport that is less taxing on my joints together with watching my diet, and only when I lose some weight should I start running, but very very slowly building up.
So that’s how, after some thinking and looking around, I found cycling. I bought a smart trainer and am using Zwift so I can listen to some music while riding and have this gamification that helps me keep motivated. So far, I love it, so I’m delighted I found something that keeps my inspiration and that I love doing. I always felt that you need to find something that you love. It will be much more challenging to maintain if you only do a sport because you want to build strength, work on fitness or lose weight. Initially, I was bumped down because I couldn’t run, but now I’m not so sad anymore as I found something I like doing, and often I have to remind myself that it’s a resting day since I feel the urge to jump on the bike and train.
As for the training, I’ve learned from experience that pacing is essential, and I shouldn’t rush anything. I’ve been training on my bike for almost two months, and I’m listening to my body much more. So far, I have never had a training where my muscles were sore the next day, so that’s a good sign.
I’ve also learned that training is not the most challenging part, but changing my diet is. They also go hand in hand as training keeps me motivated to watch my diet as that will improve my training. That’s what I like about Zwift and my smart trainer as well. If I lose weight, I will be faster, just as in real life. All these little things help with motivation. Especially on the diet part, as that’s where I need the most encouragement.
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If you enjoy running that much, why don’t you try brisk walking?
Walk with high cadence and small steps (better for the joints!). Never let your foot go down when your knee is past your center of gravity. The knee impact is far better managable and, (surprisingly?), walking speed is higher because putting your foot to far forward is actually slowing you down.
Brisk walking is extremely good for your base condition and will prepare you for jogging/running once your weight is under control. You will be able to get in a lot of time (if you have enough time) without introducing too much fatigue.
And it’s also mentally very good because it get’s you out in the fresh air and frees your mind.
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Ah, that’s a very interesting suggestion. I haven’t thought about it much. I have been walking a lot but “normally”. Around 11-12 min/km.
I’ll do some research on brisk walking and find out more on the technique involved.
Being outside is one of the reasons why is love walking and running. I don’t like cycling outdoors as much as it require much more concentration with traffic and so and I don’t find it as relaxing for the mind as walking/running. Also mainly because I always listen to some music and I don’t find it safe to do so while cycling outdoors.
But thanks for the advice on brisk walking… Definitly something I will look into!
The basic technique goes like this:
- Push your pelvis forward to engage more of your posterior muscles
- Lean slightly forward untill you feel that you will loose balance
- Start walking at high cadence
Your body weight, while leaning a bit forward, will drive you forwards. Your foot always lands to keep your knee under or slightly behind your center of gravity. It requires some focus when starting out, but you will get the hang of it soon. To increase cadence, swing your arms, bended at the elbow, faster. Your legs will automatically follow the rythm of your arms.
After a couple of months of practicing I was able to walk at 8m30sec per Km with this technique. It gets my HR up into about low Z2 (Z2 here meant as Z2 in a 7 zone system). Walking like this for an hour a day, will burn a lot of fat and the required focus frees your mind. On top of that you are outside and able to get to places you will never get with the road bike. Nothing but positive things!
Great info! Thanks for that. I will definitly try it out.
Will be great to add some variety in my training schedule together with the indoor cycling.
To upgrade walking, I would also suggest rucking. It’s kind to the joints and still gets you in Zone 2.
I hear you but I wonder how you can distinguish recovery from developing HRmax. I don’t think it is that simple of a task. Here is one scenario - once Covid hit, I used that time to start riding more consistently. Due to hip resurfacing in 2014, cancer in 2017 and home and work responsibilities, I stopped riding most days prior to 2020. I was swimming 5 d/w 2k for 15 years before that. In the first year (starting April 2020) my HRmax was 165 ( I was 55 then). A year later it was 175. This year it is 181 and just two weeks ago I hit 188 effortlessly (meaning not feeling that my heart was ready to leave my body). At the same time, my resting HR dropped 43 in 2021.Comparison of max HR and power shows a consistent picture of improvement. What do you think - recovery or development?
It’s a perfectly valid question/remark and I can’t even point you to a scientific source right away. But it’s something I’m taking for granted because I have never seen anything else. Have you ever seen a training plan or strategy claiming to improve HRmax? I haven’t… That’s no proof either but if HRmax was trainable, it would be a primary goal because it would be the best way to get more oxygen in your system and thus improve performance.
You are absolutely right that HR max can ‘change’ in certain conditions but I’m tempted to say that you are more likely to not always be able to attain HR max. We all know and accept that resting HR
goes down with better fitness and that this is a long term change. We also know that resting HR goes up when fatigued or ill, stressed,… That’s on much shorter term. Something similar can be said about HR max: when fatigued or ill, you want be able to elicit HRmax. But that’s short term unless you have a chronic desease or in your case, cancer, with a hopefully succesfull long term therapy.
Here’s an interesting article that I quickly Googled:
Aa very informative video:
I do have some questions/remarks regarding your scenario:
- How did you test HRmax?
- Where all tests done in a similar way?
It’s important to know because it’s not easy to elicit HRmax. The fact that you have to give up doesn’t mean that you reached HRmax. It could be any of your cardiovascular/respiratory/muscle systems that reached its limit. As an example, take a 20 min FTP test. If you do it right, you will be forced to stop your effort after approximately 20 min but this kind of effort will never elicit HRmax. If you get to a sprint with a lead-out where you were already fighting for the perfect place for several minutes and then jump out of the wheel to push your final effort and the adrenaline of a possible win flows through your body, then you are likely very close or at HRmax.
Another thing that makes it difficult to make any sense of the graph is that it is a plot with % HRmax on the vertical axis and we don’t know if you changed the HR max in settings for those periods. What it does show for sure is that you increased your Power/HR ratio an impressive amount. Congratulations on that.
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Thank you for the detailed response and suggestions of new resources, MedTechCD. The graph included in my original post was a screen grab from Intervals.io without any changes to the default parameters that incorporate historical best / highest values (my guess). Yet, you brought an important point that I didn’t take into account, namely, HR max test. I didn’t perform any of those apart from riding as hard as I could to set the baseline in 2020-2021 and doing 2x20’ with 8’ rest FTP tests. 2022 and 2023 values are those obtained from riding the rolling hills on a good day without any particular goal of hitting best numbers. Conceivably, my form has improved over the two-three years hence higher numbers. This is likely the case. The only reason I raised the original question (development or recovery of HRmax) is that I’ve been wondering about the source of my improvement.
Thanks again for your thoughts.
A challenging group ride on a rolling hill terrain is usually the best alternative for a race to get this kind of numbers. It’s probably dependent on the individual but my ego gives me just that little bit of extra pain tolerance to squeeze out that last bit of energy 
compared to an individual test.