Harmonizing my heart rate zones ❤️‍🔥

One nuisance with using a portfolio of fitness apps is that each one has a different idea for what my heart rate zones should be. Although not usually a problem, I do get different summaries of my training intensity across apps and, therefore, slightly different advice.

One solution is to just pick one app as canonical which for me has been HealthFit. As a supplement, I also went through and manually set them all to use the same zones, based on HealthFit’s “Percent of Heart Rate Reserve” method. I like that this method incorporates my resting heart rate and that I get slightly wider gaps between zones at lower intensities.

Although my resting heart rate is automatically calculated from my watch, my maximum heart rate is more subjective. For this I’ve taken my maximum heart rates from recent HIIT workouts which I think is close enough for my needs.

I’m mostly doing this because I want to be more precise in my workout intensities this year. Feels like a worthwhile experiment.