Over the next few weeks, I will be taking you through the MyZone zones, the colours and what they mean. Some of these blogs will be shorter than usual, but what I don’t want to do is delve into too much detail. This is because following this series of blogs I will be doing a more in-depth series on the three energy systems! This series now sets the basis for the next series after this allowing me to refer back to these posts to give you a reference point and better context hopefully allowing you to understand the posts better!
What Does It All Mean?
You have all seen the MyZone belt colours on the board during a class. Your blue zone, grey zone, the infamous yellow and red zones and the not so infamous green zone.
Over the next few weeks, I will be going through what each of those colours actually means. Because guess what, they actually refer to something and it can all be explained!
Some of the blogs during the weeks will be shorter than usual, as they give a simple outline of what each colour means. But what I am doing is setting the basis to refer back to these blogs when I delve into a deeper look into your different energy systems so that I can refer back to these to give context and give you a better understanding!
What Is On The Screen?
Firstly, I think it is important to explain what you can see on the board before starting into this blog series in case you don’t have a MyZone belt and so some of the references I may make could be lost on you, so to get everyone on the same page I will explain what everything means.
So the main ones to take note of in the case of the next few blogs are:
- Zone colour
- Heart Rate
- % of Max
These are the labels, and numbers to be concerned with the most.
The zone colours
The colour indicates what “Heart Rate Zone” or you are in at that specific point in time during a session.
Heart Rate
This is the number of times your heart is beating per minute.
% of Max
This is the heart rate percentage you are working at to your maximum heart rate. So, the usual estimate for your max heart rate is 220 – your age.
Also, what you may not know is that the information tells us what ENERGY SYSTEM you are using at that time.
During these explanations of the colours blogs I will not delve too deep into each energy system but what I am going to do is follow on from this series into an Energy System specific series to give you more detail and scope of how you are working in your classes!
The First Zone – The Grey Zone
This zone doesn’t get a lot of attention. It is only seen at the beginning and maybe at the end if you leave your monitor on long enough or stay around after a class to see it again.
You have all heard of resting heart rate…
This zone is simply you resting, walking about, chatting on the orange chairs in the corner before the class starts. It is how fast your heart is beating just doing normal things.
Typically and generally speaking, it is common for the resting heart rate to be from 60 to 100 beats per minute.
Many factors can influence your resting heart rate…
- Age
- Fitness and activity levels
- Being a smoker
- Having cardiovascular disease, high cholesterol or diabetes
- Air temperature
- Body position (standing up or lying down, for example)
- Emotions
- Body size
- Medications
- Stress / Anxiety
However, it can definitely be lowered/improved.
A person resting heart rate is normally a simple indication of their current cardiovascular fitness level.
Obviously, it can be improved with increasing the amount of physical activity, exercise and training you do. But it can also be improved by proper breathing, reducing stress and anxiety and correct nutrition.
Why you should wait to see how quickly you get back into the Grey Zone.
Something that I think people aren’t aware of, is that you can see if you are getting fitter not before or during your workout but actually after!
There is a thing known as “Heart Rate Recovery”. It is the speed or time taken for your heart rate to return to resting level after exercise.
The quicker you can get back from the red zone into the grey zone the fitter you are.
So you can actually use this to measure your heart fitness level.
So next time after you have finished spin, why not time how quickly it takes you to get back into the grey zone. Record that time, then in 4 weeks record it again to see if there is an improvement!
Jack Coxall