Not only do heart rate monitors now clean your house, do your dishes, flush the toilet and make your bed, but they can apparently tell you how many calories you've burnt. Many people simply accept this as a mysterious magical power created by companies like Polar and Suunto. Other people go through life and exercise constantly wondering if they *really* burnt as many calories as their little wristwatch is telling them.

It seems that there are many ways to determine your training zones from a wide variety of methods. I’m going to explain some of the more popular ways of determining your optimal training zones and give an example for each.

Coach Brendon writes: (Note: this article is a bit technical if you are not a technically minded person contact me for heart rate training information: brendon@endurancecoach.com)

Got yourself a heart rate monitor? Got any idea about what heart rate zones to use? Ok now what do you do about spending the right amount of time in your zones, read on!

Going from Base Training to Intensity Training

By now you've built your base and you want to move into some interval training. These workouts are hard but not so hard that you can't walk the next day. Only hard enough that you work close to your LT (lactate threshold) zone. Most studies have shown that working at or below your LT will raise LT and you will recover quicker then training above LT. Since we are triathletes, we do have three sports to train for and a quick recovery is a good thing. Following is sample workout for LT training for running and biking.