A bit of foreshadowing. My ftp is 300 watts with a max pulse of 172 and a resting pulse of 50. I have noticed for some time,that I cannot reach the upper limits of my heart rate. No problem in riding long TT - 30+ km. but in short climbs 2-3 km where I need all the power in short time I can’t manage.
I need some advice on what workouts to do to be able to get that power out in reserve
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Are you off the back of a large training block or sustained period of being ‘up’? could be a sign of fatigue
Power ≠ heart rate.
I only get to max heart rate in races. When training, even in all-out efforts such as ramp tests, I typically have 10+ bpm in reserve. Reaching max heart rate is not the same as leaving power on the table, though.
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I think its down to slow and fast twitch fibres, genetics etc I couldn’t get my HR up to max on a short effort either but I get what feels like the optimal power out for me. Ive just looked at our local hill climb where I am 72th out of 4274 riders on a 2.4km climb, I only got to 92% of my current max HR (3 years later as a near 49 year old) I doubt I could have got much more power out at the time. As @OreoCookie says I wouldn’t link power to HR, some folk are just ‘diesels’ or some folk are great ‘sprinters’ and very few folk are good at both.
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It could be down to a number of reasons, but fatigue and improved fitness could explain it.
I’m no coach but if they are hitting it
and failing in short efforts to hit max HR ,I doubt its fatigue but genetics and/or improved fitness as you say.
It sounds pretty normal to me. I have a running maxHR of 185 but i will very very rarely hit over 178 on the bike. The only times i’ll get to 182 or more is like in the last 1 mile of a hilly zwift race where i’m trying to hold the lead (or fight for 5th place, more likely) and i’m like giving it my all: death or glory. I just checked Strava and even killing myself up Alpe de Zwift in sub-44 i hit only 181 max.
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How do you know your max heart rate if you cannot reach it?
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I was in top form between May and early July. Then the form dropped sharply, accompanied by vacations, sea, etc. Only now 2 months later I start to regain some achievements from before, but with a rather low heart rate 160 max (from 172 ) .
Based on last seen highest heart rate in April
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Personally, I just view the numbers I reached as lower bounds. I originally thought my max heart rate was 180 bpm, but then I reached 184–185 bpm in two different races the same year.
I think the highest I ever got on a ramp test was 175 bpm.
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Personally, I’ve found that there are several factors that influence whether or not I can reach maximum heart rate, including insufficient calorie intake, fatigue, and motivation.
During big blocks of training I often find that appetite drops off after a week or two, and as soon as I can’t stay on top of calorie intake my heart rate drops across the entire spectrum. My normal resting heart rate is around 38-40 bpm, and my max is around 180, but I’ve seen RHR as low as 28 upon waking and struggled to crack 155 in training. I can’t remember if it was Tim Podlogar or Inigo San Milan that discussed this in a podcast, but insufficient caloric intake will limit muscular activation and therefore max heart rate.
Fatigue is also known to impact the ability to reach max HR, but unlike under-eating, fatigue tends to raise resting heart rate while limiting max heart rate. Essentially, your spectrum shrinks across the board as the ceiling drops and the floor rises.
Lastly, I find motivation has a massive impact on my ability to push myself. Although I’d like to think I get everything out of myself on the trainer or doing hill reps, I don’t get closer to pushing myself as hard as I do trying to hold a wheel. It feels like I’m going just as deep, but I’m not. I’m lucky enough to work in a bike shop with some former professional riders that have been at it for more than 30 years, and man, trying to hold their wheels when they crank it up is actual hell on earth. As much as I’d like to push myself that hard when training alone, there is no way of replicating those scenarios.
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Thanks, some of the other answers like fatigue may be relevant. I assume you’ve been close to your HRmax in the past and it wasn’t a glitch?
For a long time I used to be around 190ish then in the last few years I’d not seen my HRmax above 183 until a couple of months back when I did a long climb that has a 20%+ ramp at the end, that got my heart up to 186bpm. I assume I’d not been at that level because I’d just not been riding that hard - the climb is something you really don’t want to stop on so I had a lot of motivation to get to the top.
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Fatigue from training is known to significantly suppress heart rate. For example, my HR at the end of a ramp (itself a poor measure of max HR) is usually 5-10% lower after a training block than after a recovery week or time off the bike. Degree of HR suppression can be used as a marker for fatigue.
This would be by far the most likely cause.
During heavy training your body basically adapts to push more blood out per beat, thus “lowering” your max heart rate to produce the same (or more) blood volume. I have hit 205 coming off a few years away from endurance sport but haven’t hit 190 in a couple years even during max efforts. I’m not overly fatigued, I just can’t hit that number any more unless I take a few months off and I bet I could.
Heart rate in general is always moving and a bit all over the place as it’s heavily influenced by a number of factors. Ranges should be used as a guide but no 100% set in stone numbers. Fatigue, hydration, heat, stress, altitude, etc.
Yes, stroke volume increases with training. But this takes (a long) time - the same order of time we’d be talking about seeing changes in VO2max.
Acute training fatigue decreases HR quite significantly. This is quite well described, and shows up after even ~2-3d of harder efforts.
What happens to maxHR over years in endurance athletes is not really defined scientifically.
Physiologically, maxHR is determined a lot by diastolic dysfunction, which increases with long term training. And higher maxHR means higher cardiac output/VO2max. Basically you’d expect long term endurance training to increase maxHR.
The most recent review on this though talks about how maxHR decreases with training… which contradicts our understanding of human physiology.
However the papers it looks at also only look at short term training interventions (days to weeks), not long term (years), and largely use questionable methods of assessing maxHR (basically ramp tests, and typically performed in fatigued athletes).
So it’s an interesting topic, that is not conclusively answered scientifically.
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You should talk to a doctor if you have a medical question.
That being said - have you tried a 20-min ramp test and still not hit it?
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Heat is a factor for me, and we have quite similar numbers.
FTP about 300 HRmax 174, rest 40.
Just did an 5 min test last week, and pushed my second best 5 min ever, and my best after 1.000KJ. My HR didn’t hit 168, but it was about 18/20C.
On the other hand, 28C in a group ride, in a 6min climb and I rode it at 174bpm all the way, but the power wasn’t as good.
Zwfiting I also hit my max pretty quick, probably due to heat.
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Same. The max I’ve seen over the last couple years has been 174, and I’ve seen 172 a handful of times. Every time I get up over 170 it has been deep into a 2+ hr mtb ride, avg HR in upper z3, temps in the mid 90s with high humidity, and climbing a steep, sandy hill, probably chasing a PR, lol.
Not really. From what I’ve seen max cardiac output doesn’t occur at max HR many times because at that point your heart is not beating 100% correctly and is basically struggling to keep up.
Lots of what endurance (and VO2 max) training is trying to do is to increase your stroke volume. So you get more blood per pump but less frequent pumps. But you still (hopefully) end up with more output overall.
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