Little hub study related to heart rates

['Kaze Pete]

Pete, I have finally made some time to read that study - very inyeresting, thanks for sharing!

 

My questions/comments:

 

- Meta-analysis shows r = -0.90 for both male and female. But it's slightly lower for their laboratory study with r = -0.79 male and -0.73 female. Still much higher negative correlation than our -0.32. I think it might have something to do with our sample not having enough > 50 year olds and the ones we do have are higher max. hr outliers. Otherwise could be our sample just too small and/or max. hr not scientifically measured, etc.

 

- The big problem, and talked about in "The Myth Of Max HR ..." paper I linked one or two pages back (which references your Tanaka study), seems to be that the standard deviation is just too big to use for training for the general population? In the paper you linked they also talk of standard deviations ranging from 7 to 11 bpm which means your value (especially for older people) could be out by up to 20 bpm.

 

- The 220 - age formula seems to overestimate max. for younger people and underestimate for older people, but even having said that, the standard deviation is still large enough to not use this or other formulae? For example, miscalculating your max. hr could negatively influence your training if based on hr?

 

- Do you think it might improve the regression formula if it's split into smaller age categories? Or rather doing a curved regression line? But I think we would still sit with the standard deviation problem looking at the scatter plot graphs.

 

- Off the study, can somebody please send me the link to Discovery's method of using hr for Vitality members?

I'm strongly going to keep opinion out of this! However I think there are a lot of variables to be added to make sense of HRmax.

Stuff like

Health (and history)

medication?

Years of training (type of training?)

Heart size (dare I go to ventricle size / aorta diameter ?)

Also genetics.... (the elephant in the room)

Muscle mass vs fat percentage

 

I'm sure the medically qualified types on the hub (V12man etc) should be able to add to / remove from the list above?

 

Things like the above, even though becoming very specific, makes calculating HRmax unreachable for most people, hence Discovery chose the easiest formula which most people can understand (and calculate!) : 220 - age

 

No division, no multiplication by decimal fractions, just plain old subtraction