I know I have talked many times over my 25 years in the fitness industry as a coach, trainer and athlete about the benefits of training with a heart rate monitor… BUT here is another new article on the benefits of heart rate training in the fitness studio or gym.
Last fall we started implementing the MYZONE heart rate training program in Fitness Forward Studio. The MYZONE heart rate belt is bought online (click here to order your heart rate monitor and use facility code FITFORUS001) and worn by clients for their personal training sessions or group training sessions. Now we can see their heart rate on the big screen T.V. and their colored tiled zone is visible on the screen or big board. As a trainer and a coach, I have been waiting for almost 20 years to have this type of technology available to us in a fitness studio or gym! After many years teaching spin class by heart rate and pace with half the clients pushing the pace and the others just enjoying the social environment, now we have visible evidence of each client’s effort level.
What does this mean to the trainer? Well… now we can design workouts for each individual client that will keep their heart rate when appropriate in their recovery (blue zone), aerobic (green zone), tempo (yellow) or anaerobic (red). 
My clients can keep their heart rate aerobic during strength training exercises as we can now experiment with strength movements and visibly see what happens to the heart rate or effort level when they sit or lie down as compared to a total body functional strength movement.
I focus on functional strength training movements for clients for life movement patterns as well as sport specific so we don’t use the machine circuit that you see people resting over in the big box gyms and completely losing their posture and alignment. A total body movement or a functional strength movement pattern would be integrating the entire body instead of a single muscle group exercise. For example, instead of sitting on the lat pull machine, we now stand in a lunge position or a squat while we pull the bar to our chest. We often stand on one leg or an off-set squat position when doing upper body movements or a standing chest press on the cable machine. I usually do single arm and single leg movements in combined with another movement. Also we don’t do all of our “core” exercises on the mat… we do more standing as on the cables or with tubing.
Now combine the total body movements with a heart rate monitor. We can measure the effort level required by the client with the MYZONE effort level points program (MEPS). This provides a more time efficient workout for the client as well as metabolically efficient as we can add more cardio blasts or “HIIT” (high intensity interval training) sets into the workout to drive metabolism up post workout (EPOC). Get more out of your workouts in less time by combining movements and exercises while wearing your heart rate monitors…you won’t need to do your “Cardio” workout on the machines after your strength training session. You now will do what I call an “all in one” workout…we can get our cardio, strength, core, mobility, agility and sport specific movements in one workout session in 30 minutes! Ask me about our 30 minute sessions if you live in Bellevue, WA at fitnessforwardstudio.com/train.
Next we can work on programming the ideal workout routine for the week based on the heart rate in the previous workout or the MYZONE workout report. My goal as a trainer and coach is to avoid overtraining my client (including myself!) by only training in the yellow and red tiles or zones every two to three days. We should not train in red zone back to back days. We need recovery time in between hard high intensity workouts. 
If a client does a “HITT” type of workout then then the following day they need to do a low intensity recovery workout and stay in the green or blue tile or zone. If we rotate hard workouts then we are rested and ready to go hard on the specific scheduled day instead of being fatigued and exhausted everyday. We need to work hard but recover harder.
Try using MYZONE into your workouts and use our FITFORUS001 facility code to join our community…see the MYZONE app on your phone or login to your account on their website. Order your monitor here…get started this week on changing or improving how you train or how your trainer trains you!
Don’t you want to get results in less time and become a fat burning machine? Join our MYZONE community at Fitness Forward Studio or online!
Coach Debbie Potts
The WHOLESTIC Method to improving fat loss, health and performance for life and sports by working from the inside out.
