Possible to add «Grey Spot» to heart rate zones and power zones? Same way as sweet spot is shown. See attached photo for example.
I am 40+ and injury-prone. I typically train too hard on easy days and not hard enough on hard days, which is easy when your fitness isn’t that good. So even with low volume I easily get injuries. This leads to lack of continuity and my fitness really never picks up.
So I should avoid certain intensities in my training. Therefore it would be nice with a «Grey Spot» just like «Sweet Spot». A zone to avoid. I really do not want to adjust my intensity zones, but instead have it shown in addition to the regular zones.
Grey spot (for me) is from around 75% up to 85% of max heart rate (~85-96% av threshold heart rate). For well trained with 15+ hours/week it probably starts from around 65% of MHR.
Would be nice to be able to set the grey zone yourself. Would also love it for cycling as well, for power though.
Attached is an example I made. Junk workout with high tax on the body, but low returns on fitness compared to effort. State of mind just after I finished «great workout, feel tired».
You can edit the HR zones as you want. Use whatever calculator you like based on MHR and enter the resulting HR in the settings per sport. % will update accordingly, but referenced to LTHR.
For what you call the “Grey Spot”, that seems like a very personal thing and I’m not sure it has significant value for other users.
I could understand that you want that displayed live, to stop you from doing the wrong thing, but it has very little value on Post-Ride analysis.
You will have to learn some “Intensity Discipline”. The easiest way to start with that, is to do several weeks Base Endurance ONLY. You will be amazed at what it does for your fitness while remaining injury free.
I know I can edit the heart rate zones, but I prefer to use the standard zone charts made by professionals and that everyone uses. I use the one from Norwegian Olympiatoppen for all non-bike activities.
If I could add a 6th zone at the bottom of the table and call it «Grey Spot» it would be problem solved. It is however not possible to do that as overlapping zones are not possible.
Regarding zone discipline I agree that it is simple on a bike (or track/marathon running), just follow the power meter (or pace for running). For cross country skiing, trail running, swimming, gravel biking etc it is not that easy for amateurs. Elites train at 55-65% for easy days, amateurs should be at 70-75%, since we train 6-12 hours and not 25-30 hours/week as elites. 70-75% is borderline grey zone and it is easy to fall into the higher and wrong zone.
The most common mistake non-elite people do is to train in the grey zone. They go out day after day and train in this zone. Then they top off with extremely hard intervals once or twice a week. Fine if you are 25, but not so after 35. They see no progress after some time or worse get injuries. I would argue that most people who train do not even know that they train in this grey zone, they think they are either training easy or hard, depending which side of the spectrum. The truth is they do neither.
So a cross country workout can feel easy on a good day, but in fact you have trained the majority at 80-82%. With a grey zone stat you could see in a glance after the workout that it actually was much too hard. Then one could improve for the next workout or discover (bad) trends.
In other words: train your intensity discipline and learn your body/feel by having this stat.
As MedTechCD said the easiest way to handle this is to put your grey zone in the middle. My Z3 for cycling is my own grey zone i.e. I try to avoid training there.
I am fine with lowering Z3 start point, but I am not happy with lowering Z3 end point. Then Z4 would not be real threshold, but simply tempo.
As for using Olympiatoppen from Norway it is because they work with runners, skiiers, skaters, cyclists, footballers etc. With a population of just 5 million people we are still quite dominant in several endurance sports. Most of the acknowledged reasearch papers in the field come out of Norway as well. So I want to follow what they say.
So in my case tweaking Z3 will not help. Only adding a 6th zone (which I have in intervals.icu) works. But the best option would to have a customizable grey zone separate from the defined HR-zones. Just as sweet spot.
You can use a device like a watch from garmin and there is a possibility there to set a custom alert for every activity and hr/power zone high/low limit. So you can get a notification even during a workout exactly when you leave your preffered zone. I use it for my endurance rides (bike) and it works perfectly in situation when someone faster passes me and my ego decides to raceor with any hills. it would mean you have to modify the zones thou
I understand the idea behind using professional hr zones, sounds legit. But in reality they are just guidelines, customizing them is not a bad thing. And you can customize them to your liking. Evryones hr is different so whats the prblem anyway. If zones are seam for many athletes and many sports they are a huge compromise anyways.
“amateurs should be at 70-75%” - thats very very optimistic. The diference between pros and amateurs is partly in hours spend on training, more importantly pros have much less overall stress and much more time for recovery (no work, many recovery gadgets, daily massages, very high sleeping habbits etc). Many coaches see no much gain between 65% and 75%. Meaning small adaptation gain is not worth extra fatigue and risk. Most important is active training time. And pros are lowering endurance power/hr not because they train more but mostly because injure sets them weeks or months back and at the same time lowers avg yearly hours in training. Ask yourself if you would exchange all your previous injuries for rides limited to 65%? And what would have better impact on your current fittess/health etc.
“The most common mistake non-elite people do is to train in thefor rides grey zone”
actually most common mistke is looking too much at diffrent graphs, charts etc. and forgeting about feeling/mood before, during and after a workout. Of course we are at intervals.icu with many many charts and we all love charts and numbers But at the end most of the time (besides sudden crashes) your body sends many signs before giving up when its signs remain unaswered.
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Actually i understand your problem but i think your way of solving it, is not the best. If i was you i would set completly custom zones for myself and would make a yearly periodised plan woth long detrain and more importantly recovery weeks set as most important to follow. And would lower any endurance rides with alerts as described.
But at the end most of the time (besides sudden crashes) your body sends many signs before giving up when its signs remain unaswered.