Sprinting.
By vishwa on Inspiration
January 21, 2011
It is again a Friday, and we continue to exercise and enjoy the sprints. Our sprinting drills are preceded by a brief warmup session of slow paced jogging. The 100 meter sprints are usually integrated with workouts like pushups and Burpees. For example, today we performed 10 pushups followed by 100 meters sprint and completed each circuit by executing a finisher of 5 knee-tuck-burpees for 5 rounds. The best part of the sprint is that it is always pulled off with a race between each of us. The competitive aspect of the sprints brings out the best in us.
Besides, I regularly don my heart rate monitor on Fridays, and I have noticed that my heart rate hits above the 180 mark. The formula usually applied to gauge heart rate of an individual is 220 – age. And depending upon the individual’s fitness level, age, health, and interest his/her maximum heart rate (MHR) is calculated. Training heart rate (THR) is usually 60 -80% of MHR. For example, 220 – 34 (my age) is 186 (my MHR) and 80% of it is 148 which is my THR. Since I have been training from more than a decade, I assume to be a well conditioned athlete, for my THR indicates way above the 148 mark, which is admissible. I have tested the MHR and THR among few of my clients on Fridays and have noticed that they were all hitting beyond the specified ranges.
However, it is well established that the above formula is an estimate but not accurate, and we are all unique human-beings of different ages and levels of fitness, so our MHR can vary considerably. Nonetheless, it is very well known that 80% of MHR is a zone, which burns a great deal of fat. Since sprinting is a zone where many of us reach way beyond 80% of our MHR, we do burn a lot of fat.