Heart Rate Calculator: Find Your Max HR and Training Zones
Why max HR is not enough
Even a very accurate max HR is not enough: VT1 and VT2 are metabolic and ventilatory transitions, not fixed slices of your ceiling heart rate, so formulas built on age and %max still misplace easy, tempo, and hard work for many people.
Training from measured thresholds beats HR formulas when volume is matched: in a twelve-week trial, threshold-based zoning produced about twice the mean VO₂peak gain and a 100% responder rate versus 42% on heart-rate reserve. Across pooled trials, threshold-anchored prescription averaged roughly double the mean VO₂peak improvement, while generic percent-of-peak plans left about 45% of participants as non-responders.
What actually anchors zones is breathing: minute ventilation tracks the shifts that define those thresholds the way cardiopulmonary testing does, and no max-HR shortcut replaces measuring them under load.
Your zones, in 10 seconds
Enter your age. We use the Tanaka formula (208 - 0.7 × age) to estimate your max HR and the five training zones below.