Unlocking Better Performance: Heart Rate Monitoring & Resistance Bands, EP 217

Welcome to the award-winning champions mojo podcast.

Hello friends, I'm your host, kelly Palace, and I am solo today because Maria is traveling. I'm going to do a fun little short episode where I answer an email from one of our listeners, because you might have this question too, and the email is I have a question for you regarding heart rate. Do you monitor and track your heart rate during and after swim workouts? I realized that over the past year, part of my problem at swim meets is that I'm not getting my heart rate high enough in practice and therefore when I swim in a meet and my heart rate goes through the roof, I then have to do an open turn or roll over on my back in a long race to get some breath. So when I'm training, my heart rate has been in the 100 to 130 beats per minute, rarely above 140. I do my entire workout in the blue and the green, with some in the yellow and barely getting into the orange. Any suggestions for helping me overcome this problem with a high heart rate in meets? Click around, as I'm going to be answering this question in 30 seconds from now.

Swimmers, protect your skin and hair from chlorine damage with tri-swim. This swimmer specialized personal care line of shampoo, conditioner, body wash and lotion gently removes pool chemicals or salt water while hydrating and strengthening your hair and skin. Say goodbye to dryness and itchiness. Visit sbrsportsinccom and use code MOJO23 for 23% off. Hurry offer ends in 30 days. Give tri-swim today. Okay, let's get back to the answer of any suggestions for helping me overcome this problem with high heart rates in meets.

First, let's break down the five zones for heart rate monitoring, looking at training and performance. The very first thing you need to do is calculate your max heart rate. The most common, easiest way to do it is 220 minus your age. That should give you a ballpark of your maximum heart rate. Then the five zones are correlated with colors. So zone one is usually gray, zone two is blue, zone three is green, zone four is yellow or orange and zone five is red. Each of these zones works at a percentage of your maximum heart rate. So when you're just warming up or totally recovering, warming up or cooling down, you're in zone one, which is usually about 50 to 60% of your max heart rate. Zone two, in the blue 60 to 70% of your max heart rate. Zone three, in the green, is 70 to 80% of your max heart rate. Zone four, 80 to 90%. And then zone five is 90 to 100% and that's where we often will race, especially the sprinters. Sprinting is racing in that zone more of a aerobic endurance. If you're racing a longer race you might be in the green blue, but we have to train what we want to perform in a race. So if we're not getting into these zones in practice, then when you come to a meet this is really going to be painful and you are not going to be able to sustain it or feel comfortable. So how can we get our heart rate up in practice? Sometimes, when we're just building strength, we just don't have enough power in our stroke to make our heart rate go up enough or we're not able to push ourselves enough.

To answer the first part of the question, yes, I always monitor my heart rate in practice. It's very important to just know when I'm recovering, if I'm in the zone one. If I'm supposed to have a recovery workout, I want to be in zone one. If I've done a really hard set, I want to know that I'm what my heart rate is, and I either do it through smartwatch or I have the polar sensor on my goggles. Sometimes I just do it old school, where I take my pulse with my fingers on my neck, I take it for six seconds and I multiply it times 10 and that gives me the whole minute of what my heart rate is. So yes, I do monitor my heart rate. I think it's very important that we monitor our heart rates in practice and know what zones we're in. A really easy way to use the heart rate is do something all out, check your heart rate to see what that is, then do something moderate and see what that is, and then do something really recovery. So you just have an idea. This is what my heart rate is when I'm going easy. This is what my heart rate is when I'm going medium. This is what my heart rate is when I'm going all out. So if you don't want to do the high science of a smart watch and a smart phone and the zones and the colors, you can still just go old school. Take your pulse per six seconds, multiply it by 10 and do that. So back to answering the question.

If you want to get your heart rate up really high and also help your tempo in swimming, I think one of the great secrets is the use of resistance bands. You will get your heart rate through the roof in practice if you use a resistance swim tether. What am I talking about? There's a belt and it is attached to surgical tubing and it needs to be very secure because those things will stretch and they can sometimes pop and if they hit you wrong it's not a pleasant experience. There is a product I'm not getting paid for this, but I love the product called a swim tether. Swim tether is the brand name. It's got a beautifully comfortable belt. It wraps around your waist. You put the stretch cord part that connects to either a starting block or a ladder to get out of the water. You don't even need a starting block, but you can attach it to something that you can swim forward and you get three different lengths of resistance. It's enough to really make you get that powerful feeling in the water and your heart rate will go up. This high resistance, high heart rate. It's also great for your tempo because you've got to turn your arms over or you're going to move backwards.

I do this set twice a week and I believe it's been very helpful in creating strength, creating tempo and certainly getting my heart rate through the roof, so that when I do that in a meet I'm used to it.

If I were starting out on this set go 20 strokes and that will feel like a full 25, 20 strokes, and try not to breathe if you can, and then rest a minute. Oh, and the most important part of this is that it needs to be all out. You need to be kicking very hard, turning your arms over as fast as you can. This is an all out sprint for 20 strokes. Do that five times and you will love it, and then you could build up to 10 of those. But I highly recommend that to our listener, who wrote in this letter to use a resistance cord. It's going to get your heart rate up, it's going to get your tempo up, it's going to create power in your stroke and I hope that this will be a great answer for you guys out there, and the product that I use is SwimTether. You can find that at SwimTethercom. Thanks so much for listening and if you have any other questions you would like us to answer, email us at hello at Champions Mojo.

Thank you for listening to the Champions Mojo podcast. Did you enjoy the show? We'd be grateful if you would leave us a five star review on iTunes to help others find us, and we'd also love to hear from you. We're on all social media platforms or you can reach us at championsmojocom.