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2-Month Introduction to Heart Rate Training
Day 052 - Spikes and valleys
Warm up. Using 80% of maxHR as your base. After 2 min., accelerate quickly 15-20 bpm. When you have reached this spike, recover back to 80% for 2 minutes. Repeat 10 times over 25-45 min. 
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The Heartbeat Workout
Overview: The shape of a heart beat as profiled by the curves of an EKG contains a quick spike followed by a quick drop and then back to the plateau. Here's a workout where you get a chance to draw the shape of a heartbeat with quick sprints and quick recoveries.
Workout: The purpose of this training session is to see how quickly you can raise your heart rate by 20 beats and how quickly you can recover it by 25 beats holding a steady state heart rate for one minute in between the heart beat. If you do this quickly, the profile of each stress and recovery phase will resemble the shape of an EKG heart beat print out. The reason to do any interval session, in this case a burst of speed followed by a big helping of recovery, is to enhance your current fitness level.
Begin by warming up adequately and holding 80% of your maximum heart rate as your steady state number. After 2 minutes of steady state at 80% maximum heart rate, accelerate quickly 15-20 bpm. When you reach the peak of this spike, also known as the "R" phase of a normal electrocardiogram, immediately back off on the intensity and see how quickly you can recover the 20 bpm. Cardiologists call this interval of spike and recovery the Q-R-S wave. You should be able to complete about 10 cardiac cycles in a 25-45 minute workout.
Discussion: What I love about the Heart Beat Workout is it's fun, it's heart healthy, it improves my fitness, and it's universal to any kind of workout. For walkers, I recommend that you use stair climbing which will quickly increase your heart rate on the ups and allow quick recovery on the downs. For cyclists, you can stand up on the bike to quickly increase workload. For swimmers, increase your turn over rate for increased workload (or let your legs drag during the stress phase). Most of all, enjoy training using the heart's own signature as your guide.
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