Train in the right band.

Training zones are slices of your pulse between rest and an all-out effort. Stay in the lower bands for easy aerobic work you can talk through. Climb into tempo and threshold when the session is meant to be hard. The top band is short, uncomfortable, and not an everyday target.

Max heart rate

The headline uses Tanaka (2001): 208 minus 0.7 times your age. The old “220 minus age” rule is shown as a check — it is simpler and often a little high for older adults. If you have a lab test or a hard-session peak you trust, type that in and we use it instead.

Karvonen, if you add a resting pulse

Resting heart rate is best taken sitting quietly in the morning. When you enter it, zones use the Karvonen heart-rate reserve method: rest plus a percentage of the gap up to max. That usually fits fitter people better than a plain percentage of max. A typical resting pulse sits around 50–80 bpm; unusually high or low readings belong with a clinician, not this page.

What the five zones mean

Zone 1 is recovery. Zone 2 is easy endurance — most weekly running and cycling lives here. Zone 3 is a steady “comfortably hard”. Zone 4 is threshold. Zone 5 is VO2 max work. Watches and coaches draw the lines in slightly different places; these 50–60–70–80–90–100% bands are the common public map, not a prescription. Skip this tool if you have a heart condition, take rate-limiting medication, are pregnant, or have been told not to train by pulse.