How come the suggested Zones of Strava and Intervals.icu turn out quite differently?
Strava calculates on a basis of max HR of 185:
Zone 1|Endurance: 0-109
Zone 2|Moderate: 109-144
Zone 3|Tempo: 144-161
Zone 4|Threshold: 161-179
Zone 5|Anaerobic: >179
Intervals.icu gives the following 7 Zones:
Zone 1|Active Recovery: 0-134
Zone 2|Endurance: 135-149
Zone 3|Tempo: 150-155
Zone 4|Thershold: 156-166
Zone 5|VO2 Max: 167-171
Zone 6|Anaerobic: 172-176
Zone 7|Neuromuscular: 177-184
To have endurance work below 109 (like Strava says) seems odd to me. Cooking or working would be enough for that at times. I personally like the intervals.icu-range up to 149bpm as I manage to stay below quite easily. However they seem very different, also the threshold suggestions. Can anyone explain?
I based the Intervals.icu HR zones on zones from Joe Friel. It looked to me that he had attempted to match the HR zones to cycling power zones which is what I was after. I wanted time in zones for HR only activities to be comparable to rides with power. I am not sure where Strava HR zones come from.
For myself the numbers work out quite well. I do most of my rides with power and HR and the âtime in zonesâ numbers for power and HR are very close:
I had a paying Strava account last year, and used the fitness en fatigue chart.
I noticed that customizing my heartrate zones completly messed up this chart.
Even when I duplicated the heart rate zones calculated by Strava and put them in the customized option, the results where completely different.
I donât know if Strava fixed this since, so, tread carefully when customizing.
If they fixed it, disregard this message.
OK, I guess they corrected the bug since then.
Just to be sure I didnât dream it, googled it and found an other mention of it in september 2019.
But, no longer relevant, so, carry on everyone
From my experience, changing to custom HR zones in strava (with different boundaries between zones as a percentage of max HR) will significantly alter the calculation of relative effort and in turn the strava calculated fitness/fatigue/form, but it will only apply to new activities after the point in time when you change your zones. So⌠I think both @Mark_Put & @Cyclopaat may be right on this one.
I seem to remember a discussion on changing FTP or weight and how that would apply to ALL past activities, so I guess theyâve sorted that out, as Mark suggested.
Wow just changed my HR zones from what Iâve understood Sieler approach is to the Friel approach, and all my Zone 2 HR moves to Zone 1. From my numbers, all of Zone 2 HR in the Friel modal would actually be tempo. Does Friel prescribe riding most âenduranceâ in this tempo HR zone, or would he just call Zone 1 endurance?
Comparison:
Yes I had that to begin with but was experimenting with the default Friel values and was asking about his approach more than the awesome app implementation
Heart rate zones are personal: I wouldnât put too much store in any predefined values. They are just guidelines.
If you didnât already, you should test your threshold HR out on the bike, rather than just basing it on your maximum HR. Then you can set your zones accordingly and theyâll be much more accurate.
My idea about this is that, for running, Pace and Power zones should return fairly similar results but since HR is always lagging, it is basically impossible that Power and HR zones line up.
If you know your AeT, you could set the top of HR Z2 at that HR. Depending on your fitness, that should correspond more or less to 70-80% of FTP power.
I did lactate testing 2 years ago I had 2 mmol at about 130bpm, which should be my endurance zone 2 (z2) .I think my LTHR is be about 162 and its very close to Coggan/Hunter zones definition.According to Friel my endurance zone 2 is 131-144, where my lactate was at 3mmol/L. It looks that, at least at my case, Coggan is more accurate. But HR is very individual and Xert tells me my LTP(endurance zone) is 144, even when i have dont any base training yet. So hard to tell, what zones to use. Friel writes, that LTHR likely will not change during the season, just a power, but Coggan tells :
As you train, you become more efficient at using lactate as fuel, meaning that you can actually run at a higher heart rate and produce less excess lactate. Therefore, as you get fitter and do more zone 2 training, LTHR should be HIGHER than previously measured. What has happened is that you can now run at a higher intensity (increased heart rate) and uptake lactate more efficiently.
so perhaps some regular 20min test (or automatic detection :-)) would be the best
