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Monitoring Your Intensity
When you are doing cardiovascular workouts, it is important that you work at the appropriate intensities
when you are first starting out. It is also important that you workout at a variety of intensities after you
have built a fitness base.
Research in recent years has indicated that one of the best ways to monitor your cardiovascular intensity
is to pay close attention to how you are feeling when you workout. Most individuals can do a very good
job of choosing the correct intensities if they simply categorize how they feel into one of four intensity
“zones.”
These zones could be described the following ways:
Zone Description
1 • Easy
• Warm-up
• Cool-down
2 • Challenging, but comfortable
• Steady endurance pace
3 • Challenging, and slightly uncomfortable
• Race pace
• Borderline out of breath
4 • Breathless
• Not maximum, but winded
• Can’t keep the pace for very long
When you are first starting out, you should exclusively work in the Zone 1 and Zone 2 intensities. After
a few weeks, you can occasionally incorporate Zone 3 and Zone 4 intensities for short periods of time.
Remember, when you begin to incorporate Zone 3 and Zone 4 intensities, you will find that you will likely
have to drop down to Zone 1 intensities shortly thereafter as brief recovery periods.
For variety, you can spend a little bit of time in each of the four Zones during one workout, and then spend
your time in just one Zone during the next workout.
Prenatal woman should always remain at Zone 1 and Zone 2 intensities, and anyone unaware of their
current medical condition should also avoid Zone 3 and Zone 4 without prior clearance from their doctor.
These Zones can be translated into target heart rate numbers if your fitness product has a grip or
telemetric heart rate counter. Research has shown the best way to do this is not to establish heart rate
numbers based upon age, but rather based upon how you feel.
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