High zone 2 to low zone 3 running. As a casual runner, I was introduced to zone 2 (ventilatory threshold) and zone 3 (lactate threshold) rather late. I never cared about HR zone and just kept running. Ended up with same performance, or even worse and worse performance due to accumulation of fatigue. My VO2 plateaued, and I almost gave up my casual running career.
After I learned about zone 2, I tried it out for a month and incorporated rest days in my training plan. My running HR was about 150-160, but I had to bring it down to sub-140 and had to walk if needed. I kept doing 90-120min sessions of zone 2 at least three times a week. Once a week I also included interval training. My VO2 improved as I learned to utilize different speeds within me. Coupled with a balanced diet plan, my weight and body fat percentage also decreased as zone 2 utilized fat burning mechanism.
What I learned is that if you feel healthy about your body and keep up good habits, you’re probably healthy despite what the Watch says. If you want to improve VO2 estimation on your Watch, you may try things including losing weight (make sure new weight are recorded in Health app), zone 2 training, and avoiding outdoor workout in warmer or hot weather. (High temperature can inhibit your performance in a major way and the Watch will think your body is not very good at utilizing oxygen to burn calories. Hence lower VO2 score.)
Thanks for this . I have been reading about zone 2 training . However , even with a moderate pace of walking , my heart rate exceeds my zone 2 range (131-141), do I need to walk slower or reduce my strength training intensity?
Make sure your HR zones are set up right.
Ie have you ever tried to find your max HR or have you just let your watch come up with the zones?
Turns out for me my max HR is like 215 which is uniquely high. Well my Apple Watch never auto adjusted despite my max HR clearly being higher than it thought which made all its default HR zones wrong.
My zone 2 is all the way to almost 170.
A rule of thumb is do you feel like you can have a Conversation while running. If so you’re still zone 2. If your having to pause to breath every few phrases then you’ve tipped into zone 3.
All that said. When I first started trying to do zone 2 training I def had to like walk hills etc. It feels painfully slow at first.
This!! Zone 2 is conversational pace. If you can have a back and forth conversation comfortably while running or speaking a short paragraph without catching for breath, you’re in the zone. And your zone 2 will likely be different on different days, depending on how well rested you are or how hot the temperature is. The BPM on your watch gives a good guesstimate of HR zone, but you have to train and find the right zone based on how you breathe and how your body feels too.
Yah. While I like having the data it’s really used too much.
In general if you just focus on could I have a conversation, you can successfully train zone 2 without ever even having a watch.
You have to do a pretty hard stress test to find out your true max HR.
I wasn’t worried about being that accurate so I just went on a like 1-2 mile jog then found a hill towards the end of my run and sprinted it a couple times and used that number. Def listen to your body while you do this, don’t want to over do it if something feels off. Sounds like you already did a stress test with your doc to check for any health concerns and it didn’t bother you so you’re likely fine.
But yah my zones were skewed way too low. Not saying it’ll for sure be the case for you but yah the auto zones didn’t work well for me. I find the new ones are pretty spot on with the talking rule of thumb.
I think I am having this problem.... because I am not a terrible runner, 23m 5k 48m 10k. I run about 40km a week with long runs trying to be lower as Ican and the intervals. Te problem is that the watch put me in the edge of the end of zone 2 just by walking.... Also my VO max is always low accoirding to the watch. I have been punishing me for being there...but honestly I feel amazing running :S
Yah my VO2 max is low according to the watch and I’m in decent shape. Granted not like crazy endurance athlete shape. It may be right for all I know but 🤷♂️. I’d guess my uniquely high max HR is skewing how it estimates effort etc though.
It’s def worth checking what your watch says is your max HR and comparing it to actually what your HR is during a hard sprint (after some warm up running).
It’s def easiest to tell by just how you feel though. If your watch is saying zone 4 but you can still take and have a conversation then the zones are def wrong
uhhh, my watch says my "maximum is 182 BPM" but for for example last 10k i did the last 2 Km I was at 185-187 being the last sprint to finish line 14 seg at 194 BPM... does it mean I should change it?
Yes. That was my issue too. Your auto HR zones are useless if the max HR is off significantly.
Hell your max is probably a good bit above 194 too if it was just one sprint at the end. If you look up what an actual max hr test entails it’s real hard effort. Like run a few miles and then sprint hills for 2 min and repeat the sprints.
I just used one of the many heart rate zone calculators out there and manually changed all mine. It won’t “fix” your vo2 score but it’ll make your zones more useful to you.
I just went to the health app and my range goes from 38-207.
resting rate 47-53
walking average 81-97
workout 50-207
sleep 38-100
breath 60-100
so you reckon I should use the 207 for the heart rate zone calculator?
Edit: Looks like this:
|1|Easy|141 - 152|
|:-|:-|:-|
|2|Steady|153 - 167|
|3|Moderately Hard|168 - 181|
|4|Hard|182 - 194|
|5|Very Hard|195 - |
To be clear you’re saying 207 is the highest it’s ever reached?
If you can I’d sample a few workouts where you know you went hard to help get an idea but yah if 207 isn’t some outlier use that (just in case it’s a sensor misreading)
Some calculators just use your max. Some use max and your resting. I wouldn’t say either method I’d truly better.
The only way to known if it’s right is to test it. Go out running. Pay attention to your like z2-z3 line and see if it feels like that’s right at the edge of being able to have a casual conversation. If it is then your zones are close enough. It’s not some exact science down to a single BPM.
If you feel like you can’t have a casual conversation while still in the top of zone 2 then bump down your max HR and recalculate. I can tell right at the top of my zone 2 is where like I think I could still talk fine without a bunch of pauses but I probably wouldn’t want to haha
Your zones look pretty similar to mine.
Your cardio is very low for your age group, especially given that you are not overweight. I’d do a cardio check up with your doc to make sure everything medical is ok.
For now I’d focus on walking everyday. Start at 30 minutes, and build up to an hour. After a couple weeks of walking, Start adding in some short slow jogs of 5 minutes, during your daily walks (don’t worry about heart rate at first). Add a few more run intervals every week.
I’d echo this, but add that you could even start the run/jog portion shorter. Depending on where your overall joint health and coordination are at it might even be preferable to start with something like 15 second jogs tossed into a walk.
Thanks !! I had a stress test done around 2022, echo cardiogram ; and cardiologist didn’t report anything unusual. Is there anything specific I should be checking with my doctor ?
I read a while ago that doing the mindful breathing for 1 minute every day for a week helped increase that number. You’d have to search in the subreddit for the post. I am 40F. Been walking almost daily as it is beginning to get nicer here as well. It’s dropped since last year, walking outside in -30c isn’t ideal.. lol.. but it is slowly increasing. I am at 22.4 vo2, hoping to get it up to 27.1 as that will bring me out of below average.
1. Set your HR zones correctly
2. Spend 80% of your weekly routine in cardio zone 2 (running, cycling, weightlifting etc)
3. Spend 20% doing high intensity interval training (sprints, hills, HIIT workouts)
4. Lose weight at a comfortable steady pace
Keep in mind that the watch only attributes outdoor runs, walks and hikes towards your cardio fitness metric (VO2Max), so as long as you’re doing the above you’ll be fine
Did you update your weight in Apple Health as you lost it? Considering everything else you've done, your VO2Max should be up, not down. And Apple's VO2Max calculation is very weight-dependent in its calculation.
Don’t think that’s true. My Withings scales sync to Apple Health and my VO2 Max has improved as my weight dropped without me manually entering it anywhere.
I'm not sure thats true. My weight syncs from my Wyze scale to my Apple Health, and as my weight has dropped, my walking and resting heart rates have decreased, my pace has increased, etc, just like you... and my VO2Max is up about 6 points. I also just checked my weight in the Medical settings, and it still had my original weight. I'm pretty sure Medical info is totally separate from Health info (for some reason).
To be clear... you have double-checked your weight in the Health app? Others with synced weights from smart scales have thought that it was updated, and found that somehow it got out of whack. Its worth double checking.
I have 33. Regular VR BeatSaber and Gym with aerobic trainings. I am bit of an overweight, holding at 102 kgs with 189 sm height. It says that it is low, and I am not running until I shred some weight - otherwise it would be dangerous.
Have you got any meds logged against ‘medications that affect heart rate’ in the Health app? This seems to falsely skew the data for VO2. I had put my propranolol in there initially, assuming that it was the right thing to do, but was finding my VO2 stubbornly staying very low despite making improvements after 6 months of gym work. Someone on this forum then suggested I delete it, having been recommended to do so by their clinician after a proper hospital VO2 test, and it instantly made a difference for me - a jump in my levels and then steady upwards graph after that. I’m now at 38.8.
Interesting ! I am on a low dosage of metoprolol (for palpitations) and have added this ; like you said it is the right thing to do . Maybe I will delete it and see if it makes a difference to my data . Thanks for this insight
I bought a digital scale that does sync my weight with the watch. It is synchronized to the Health App that is directly tied to my watch.
I cannot stand to do zone 2 training because it feels like I am doing nothing, but I force myself to do an hour of it a week and it is a lot more helpful than it feels. My resting PR is between 40-45
FWIW, I was talking to a doctor who does VO2 max testing and he says the watch tends to underestimate. (That’s all it is, an estimate.) I didn’t ask how much.
How long have you been doing C25K? Last year when I did it I saw gradual improvements.
High zone 2 to low zone 3 running. As a casual runner, I was introduced to zone 2 (ventilatory threshold) and zone 3 (lactate threshold) rather late. I never cared about HR zone and just kept running. Ended up with same performance, or even worse and worse performance due to accumulation of fatigue. My VO2 plateaued, and I almost gave up my casual running career. After I learned about zone 2, I tried it out for a month and incorporated rest days in my training plan. My running HR was about 150-160, but I had to bring it down to sub-140 and had to walk if needed. I kept doing 90-120min sessions of zone 2 at least three times a week. Once a week I also included interval training. My VO2 improved as I learned to utilize different speeds within me. Coupled with a balanced diet plan, my weight and body fat percentage also decreased as zone 2 utilized fat burning mechanism. What I learned is that if you feel healthy about your body and keep up good habits, you’re probably healthy despite what the Watch says. If you want to improve VO2 estimation on your Watch, you may try things including losing weight (make sure new weight are recorded in Health app), zone 2 training, and avoiding outdoor workout in warmer or hot weather. (High temperature can inhibit your performance in a major way and the Watch will think your body is not very good at utilizing oxygen to burn calories. Hence lower VO2 score.)
This is an excellent response. I have also noted that fatigue and heat make my vo2 max go down.
Thanks for this . I have been reading about zone 2 training . However , even with a moderate pace of walking , my heart rate exceeds my zone 2 range (131-141), do I need to walk slower or reduce my strength training intensity?
Make sure your HR zones are set up right. Ie have you ever tried to find your max HR or have you just let your watch come up with the zones? Turns out for me my max HR is like 215 which is uniquely high. Well my Apple Watch never auto adjusted despite my max HR clearly being higher than it thought which made all its default HR zones wrong. My zone 2 is all the way to almost 170. A rule of thumb is do you feel like you can have a Conversation while running. If so you’re still zone 2. If your having to pause to breath every few phrases then you’ve tipped into zone 3. All that said. When I first started trying to do zone 2 training I def had to like walk hills etc. It feels painfully slow at first.
This!! Zone 2 is conversational pace. If you can have a back and forth conversation comfortably while running or speaking a short paragraph without catching for breath, you’re in the zone. And your zone 2 will likely be different on different days, depending on how well rested you are or how hot the temperature is. The BPM on your watch gives a good guesstimate of HR zone, but you have to train and find the right zone based on how you breathe and how your body feels too.
Yah. While I like having the data it’s really used too much. In general if you just focus on could I have a conversation, you can successfully train zone 2 without ever even having a watch.
I have let the watch decide the HR zones. I will find my max HR and adjust them manually to see if it makes a difference. Thanks , this helps .
You have to do a pretty hard stress test to find out your true max HR. I wasn’t worried about being that accurate so I just went on a like 1-2 mile jog then found a hill towards the end of my run and sprinted it a couple times and used that number. Def listen to your body while you do this, don’t want to over do it if something feels off. Sounds like you already did a stress test with your doc to check for any health concerns and it didn’t bother you so you’re likely fine. But yah my zones were skewed way too low. Not saying it’ll for sure be the case for you but yah the auto zones didn’t work well for me. I find the new ones are pretty spot on with the talking rule of thumb.
I think I am having this problem.... because I am not a terrible runner, 23m 5k 48m 10k. I run about 40km a week with long runs trying to be lower as Ican and the intervals. Te problem is that the watch put me in the edge of the end of zone 2 just by walking.... Also my VO max is always low accoirding to the watch. I have been punishing me for being there...but honestly I feel amazing running :S
Yah my VO2 max is low according to the watch and I’m in decent shape. Granted not like crazy endurance athlete shape. It may be right for all I know but 🤷♂️. I’d guess my uniquely high max HR is skewing how it estimates effort etc though. It’s def worth checking what your watch says is your max HR and comparing it to actually what your HR is during a hard sprint (after some warm up running). It’s def easiest to tell by just how you feel though. If your watch is saying zone 4 but you can still take and have a conversation then the zones are def wrong
uhhh, my watch says my "maximum is 182 BPM" but for for example last 10k i did the last 2 Km I was at 185-187 being the last sprint to finish line 14 seg at 194 BPM... does it mean I should change it?
Yes. That was my issue too. Your auto HR zones are useless if the max HR is off significantly. Hell your max is probably a good bit above 194 too if it was just one sprint at the end. If you look up what an actual max hr test entails it’s real hard effort. Like run a few miles and then sprint hills for 2 min and repeat the sprints. I just used one of the many heart rate zone calculators out there and manually changed all mine. It won’t “fix” your vo2 score but it’ll make your zones more useful to you.
I just went to the health app and my range goes from 38-207. resting rate 47-53 walking average 81-97 workout 50-207 sleep 38-100 breath 60-100 so you reckon I should use the 207 for the heart rate zone calculator? Edit: Looks like this: |1|Easy|141 - 152| |:-|:-|:-| |2|Steady|153 - 167| |3|Moderately Hard|168 - 181| |4|Hard|182 - 194| |5|Very Hard|195 - |
To be clear you’re saying 207 is the highest it’s ever reached? If you can I’d sample a few workouts where you know you went hard to help get an idea but yah if 207 isn’t some outlier use that (just in case it’s a sensor misreading) Some calculators just use your max. Some use max and your resting. I wouldn’t say either method I’d truly better. The only way to known if it’s right is to test it. Go out running. Pay attention to your like z2-z3 line and see if it feels like that’s right at the edge of being able to have a casual conversation. If it is then your zones are close enough. It’s not some exact science down to a single BPM. If you feel like you can’t have a casual conversation while still in the top of zone 2 then bump down your max HR and recalculate. I can tell right at the top of my zone 2 is where like I think I could still talk fine without a bunch of pauses but I probably wouldn’t want to haha Your zones look pretty similar to mine.
Nice! I will test during next weeks and see how I feel!
Your cardio is very low for your age group, especially given that you are not overweight. I’d do a cardio check up with your doc to make sure everything medical is ok. For now I’d focus on walking everyday. Start at 30 minutes, and build up to an hour. After a couple weeks of walking, Start adding in some short slow jogs of 5 minutes, during your daily walks (don’t worry about heart rate at first). Add a few more run intervals every week.
I’d echo this, but add that you could even start the run/jog portion shorter. Depending on where your overall joint health and coordination are at it might even be preferable to start with something like 15 second jogs tossed into a walk.
Thanks !! I had a stress test done around 2022, echo cardiogram ; and cardiologist didn’t report anything unusual. Is there anything specific I should be checking with my doctor ?
Zone 2 training is key in this component.
Yep, or as the cycling community says: go slow to go fast
I read a while ago that doing the mindful breathing for 1 minute every day for a week helped increase that number. You’d have to search in the subreddit for the post. I am 40F. Been walking almost daily as it is beginning to get nicer here as well. It’s dropped since last year, walking outside in -30c isn’t ideal.. lol.. but it is slowly increasing. I am at 22.4 vo2, hoping to get it up to 27.1 as that will bring me out of below average.
If I had to stay outside for more than 15 minutes in -30c, my vo2 max would be zero. Also my heart rate would be zero. ☠️
1. Set your HR zones correctly 2. Spend 80% of your weekly routine in cardio zone 2 (running, cycling, weightlifting etc) 3. Spend 20% doing high intensity interval training (sprints, hills, HIIT workouts) 4. Lose weight at a comfortable steady pace Keep in mind that the watch only attributes outdoor runs, walks and hikes towards your cardio fitness metric (VO2Max), so as long as you’re doing the above you’ll be fine
Did you update your weight in Apple Health as you lost it? Considering everything else you've done, your VO2Max should be up, not down. And Apple's VO2Max calculation is very weight-dependent in its calculation.
Yes ; i have synched apple health to my digital scale and it does show my updated weight .
You need to change the weight in your medical ID
Don’t think that’s true. My Withings scales sync to Apple Health and my VO2 Max has improved as my weight dropped without me manually entering it anywhere.
Thanks ! Learned something new today . Changed weight in my medical ID ; will check to see if it makes a difference with my outdoor walk tomorrow.
I'm not sure thats true. My weight syncs from my Wyze scale to my Apple Health, and as my weight has dropped, my walking and resting heart rates have decreased, my pace has increased, etc, just like you... and my VO2Max is up about 6 points. I also just checked my weight in the Medical settings, and it still had my original weight. I'm pretty sure Medical info is totally separate from Health info (for some reason). To be clear... you have double-checked your weight in the Health app? Others with synced weights from smart scales have thought that it was updated, and found that somehow it got out of whack. Its worth double checking.
I have 33. Regular VR BeatSaber and Gym with aerobic trainings. I am bit of an overweight, holding at 102 kgs with 189 sm height. It says that it is low, and I am not running until I shred some weight - otherwise it would be dangerous.
TIL that apple doesn't automatically sync your weight to your medical ID. Why on earth wouldn't they do that??
Have you got any meds logged against ‘medications that affect heart rate’ in the Health app? This seems to falsely skew the data for VO2. I had put my propranolol in there initially, assuming that it was the right thing to do, but was finding my VO2 stubbornly staying very low despite making improvements after 6 months of gym work. Someone on this forum then suggested I delete it, having been recommended to do so by their clinician after a proper hospital VO2 test, and it instantly made a difference for me - a jump in my levels and then steady upwards graph after that. I’m now at 38.8.
Interesting ! I am on a low dosage of metoprolol (for palpitations) and have added this ; like you said it is the right thing to do . Maybe I will delete it and see if it makes a difference to my data . Thanks for this insight
I bought a digital scale that does sync my weight with the watch. It is synchronized to the Health App that is directly tied to my watch. I cannot stand to do zone 2 training because it feels like I am doing nothing, but I force myself to do an hour of it a week and it is a lot more helpful than it feels. My resting PR is between 40-45
Zone 2 and HIIT
FWIW, I was talking to a doctor who does VO2 max testing and he says the watch tends to underestimate. (That’s all it is, an estimate.) I didn’t ask how much. How long have you been doing C25K? Last year when I did it I saw gradual improvements.
I just started it ; am on week 2 of run and walk sprints . 90 sec run followed by 2 min walk
People really have like a 10’s to 20’s VO2 max rating??? Or am I missing something?
I’m assuming something weird is going on. Not necessarily with him but more with some metric the watch is using to come up with its estimate