Okay. Here’s a great one. Gene Pierre, asked the question, “I always find that this time of year, when getting back into my training,” Gene Pierre is obviously in northern hemisphere. He’s obviously coming through a winter. His heart rate is very high. “What training should I do, thanks.”

Okay, here’s the deal on heart rate. People think that heart rate’s just this definitive thing that’s always the same. Heart rate varies. When you’re de-trained, when you’ve spent a couple of months off the bike, or you aren’t training so much, you generally find that you’re able to ride quite high up into your maximum heart rate. Your maximum heart rate is going to be the best maximum heart rate numbers that you’ll get.

This is for seasoned athletes. It’s a bit different for people getting into the sport. When they get into the sport, they’ll generally find that their max heart rate will improve over time as they work through their programs and stuff. We’ll see that people that haven’t got good aerobic fitness, to start off with, will see their maximum heart rate improve over the weeks as they progress through the training program. Then they’ll start plateauing.

But if you’re a seasoned athlete and you’ve been training for a while, and you de-train, when you get back into it you’ll find your max heart rate is quite high. In fact, it may be higher that what you normally see it to be. That’s normal. As you get into your training load, you’ll find that that max heart rate will come down two maybe five beats. You’ll never see that max heart rate again, until you de-train yourself. That’s normal. That’s how max heart rate’s work. We see it all the time with people with people’s data.

Gene, I hope that answers your question. To reduce it, all you need to do is start training again and you’ll find that that’ll come down. That’s an easy question to answer. But it’s an interesting phenomena. I don’t know the physiological reasons for it. I’m sure there’s a sports scientist out there that understands why that happens. I see it in people’s data all the time, in fact, we look for it. When we start seeing that max heart rate coming down a little bit, we know that the athlete’s training well.

Check this article on How To Work Out Your Cycling Heart Rate Zones.