Starting Strength: The Cardiovascular Conundrum

[Greg Esres]

Max Heart Rate: 151

I just finished my 11th Prowler workout and I was sure that my heart rate had to be much higher than 151. So I strapped on my monitor today and during my first 4 runs, I had a max rate of...145. Adding some weight didn't change that.

I've been resting about 5 minutes between runs, because that's how long it took me to stop gasping for breath; by that time, my heart rate had slowed to 130. I found that if I kept my heart rate up to 138 or so by engaging in light activity, my max heart rate edged into the 150 territory, with my max of 153.

If my goal is to have my heart rate elevated for an extended period, my guess is that I need to cut down on my time between runs, do something active between runs, or make my runs longer.

[rm_sidell]

Thanks for the help, gentlemen. I'm probably getting ahead of myself by asking all these sorts of questions but I am a very curious mind and I'm interested in improving all aspects of my fitness optimally, which doesn't appear possible. Maybe for now, I'll stick with strength and then aim for cardio and endurance gains.

[payton1221]

They know they don't progress as fast

Andy,

What are your thoughts on biking and its affect on recovery for someone more interested in weight training? I've heard that its a better source of cardio for lifters--any truth in that?

[Andy Baker (KSC)]

Not a lot of experience with biking. Trained a few sprint cyclists. They were all strong.

[Cody]

Thanks for the help, gentlemen. I'm probably getting ahead of myself by asking all these sorts of questions but I am a very curious mind and I'm interested in improving all aspects of my fitness optimally, which doesn't appear possible. Maybe for now, I'll stick with strength and then aim for cardio and endurance gains.

You cannot optimally train all qualities of fitness simultaneously outside of the novice phase. That's the very reason block periodization was created. Verkoshansky, Issurin, Matveyev, etc all deal with block training. The advanced athlete section in Practical Programming covers block training. Supertraining is an excellent text covering this topic, too. For now, though, just do the linear program as written and push a sled once a week. All areas of fitness will progress simultaneously so long as you are a novice.