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Rick Crawford: heart monitoring is still key to training

By Rick Crawford
Published: Apr. 18, 2008

These days, power is getting all the press. With all the power measuring gizmos and fancy analysis software, power has taken over as the main parameter to track. It’s absolutely absolute. It’s like having a dynamometer on your dashboard, measuring your horsepower in real time. Indeed, power is a powerful number, but it’s not the only number that counts. There’s more than one gauge on the dashboard and they are all important.

Heart rate (HR) still rules as the master indicator of your body’s status. It’s like the rest of the gauges on the dashboard. Your car has a temperature gauge, a fuel gauge, an oil pressure gauge, a tachometer, and a speedometer … all of which tell what’s going on in the running engine. Those gauges tell if you’re running low on fuel, running the engine too hard, if you’re overheating, and how fast you’re going. The heart tells a lot about our bodies. It tells us what’s going on when our engine is running. It tells us when it’s fatigued or overheated. It tells us when we’re unmotivated or depressed. It tells us when the parking brake is on. It has been advertised lately that the heart is a finicky indicator of output, but that is not true, it just has more than one job to do other than indicate output.

HR tells the whole story

Since the heart obeys the Central Nervous System (CNS), it tells the story of what the CNS and the rest of the body has been through. Power, being the absolute end-all that it is, tells what’s going on right now on the bike. But what led to that wattage at that moment? Form is the culmination of past work and adaptations that manifest in the temporary current state. It’s important to note that Lactate Threshold (LT) is not a static HR or wattage, but rather a fleeting chemical status that is hugely variable and happens in a fairly large range of HR and power output. If HR is low at LT, there’s a reason for it and ideally, we need to know why that is. HR tells the whole story. Fatigue of some sort is the usually the reason, but what kind of fatigue and why? Low HR usually indicates some degree of central fatigue, that is, fatigue of the CNS that manifests as a low HR. This is a natural occurrence and necessary for growth, but should be watched carefully and completely understood.

Along with wattage, HR completes the athlete’s dashboard. Together these two parameters , along with perception, are the bomb. They behave in relation to each other in a predictable fashion. A rested and untrained athlete will have relatively high HR and relatively low power as it has not been developed. As a training cycle advances, HR will tend to trend downwards, and power will trend upwards as form develops. HR trends downward as a function of central fatigue, and power trends upwards as a function of physiological adaptation. The point comes when fatigue suppresses power output. It should be clear that central fatigue cannot be allowed to continuously trend downward as catastrophic collapse is eminent, therefore training cycles must include recovery that allows continuous progression. It is a predictable cycle. When you’re as fresh as a daisy and HR is high, you are probably a little below the peak on the form curve, and when you’re centrally fatigued and HR is low, you’re likely past the peak. HR and power do this dance through every training cycle.

Sensation also important

Perception is a key element also. LT always feels the same whether power is great or poor. So the only way an athlete knows where LT is on any given training ride is by being keen to what the sensations are. These sensations, correlated against HR and power are the key components of the athlete’s dashboard.

I typically train my athletes on three week cycles with every 4th week dedicated to recovery to allow for this process to cycle over and over. This is just sound periodization at work and it’s based on the HR/power relationship. In a four week cycle, I expect the athlete to start in a rested state, a bit sub-optimized on power, but with plenty of energy to complete the block. HR should be very reactive and high, and if it’s not, a full diagnostic search is done to find out why.

Regardless of power output, if HR is below a designated target, I order the workout to be halted. I designate an optimal target and if LT happens at 4% or more below that target, it’s done. When a rider is approaching peak form but HR is trending low, a precipitous drop in health and/or form are near, and it is good advice to stay away from the precipice … don’t play on the cliff’s edge. Back to motor-head lingo, too heavy on the gas pedal without attention to the gauges and something is going to blow.

HR reacts to altitude, temperature, fatigue, and emotion… all super important factors to manage in a training program. HR also reacts to caffeine. Sometimes it’s difficult to know why HR fluctuates, but that doesn’t mean every effort shouldn’t be made to find out why. Power is mui importante, no doubt there, but be aware that the heart tells so much about the body’s status that it shouldn’t be neglected. Know what trends are supposed to be happening.

Analyze more than just the power numbers. Be aware that the sensations with the numbers are the whole package and know what they mean in real time at the place you are in the training cycle. Use the whole dashboard, and the little white lines on the road will go by faster than ever before.


Editor's note: Rick Crawford is Director of Coaching and COO of Colorado Premier Training. He is also the head coach for the Fort Lewis College cycling team in Durango, Colorado.