Calculate your desired heart rate based on your age on your desired training effort. The training effort is a percentage of your max heart rate. Not sure what heart rate you want to be at? Check out the table below for your target heart rate.

Heart Rate Zone Formula

The following formulas determine your heart rate zone. 

HRZ = HR / MHR

To calculate the heart rate zone, divide the heart rate by the max heart rate.

  1. Moderate activity 50-60% max heart rate
  2. Weight control 60-70% max heart rate
  3. aerobic zone (cardio) 70-80% max heart rate
  4. anaerobic zone 80-90% max heart rate
  5. ALL OUT ZONE 90-100% heart rate

What is a heart rate zone?

You might be asking, what is a heart rate zone? Simply speaking, a heart rate zone is a range of heart rate, in beats per minute, that is determined by a percentage of your maximum heart rate. What these heart rate zones actually mean in terms of exercise is described in the picture below.

heart rate zones

As you can see in the table above, there are 5 main categories for working out with regards to heart rate.

  1. Moderate activity 50-60% max heart rate
  2. Weight control 60-70% max heart rate
  3. aerobic zone (cardio) 70-80% max heart rate
  4. anaerobic zone 80-90% max heart rate
  5. ALL OUT ZONE 90-100% heart rate

The last zone is of particular importance. For the first four zones, your heart rate will likely be within 5% of the numbers listed in the table above. For the last zone, it becomes less accurate. This is because your actual max heart rate at 100% effort is determined a lot by your fitness level. To learn more about how to find out how good your fitness is, click here.

Maximum Heart Rate formula

So if all of these values are based on a maximum heart rate, how can you determine what your max heart rate (MHR) actually is. Well as you can see from the table above, it’s depended on your age, but no everyone agrees on the exact formula. There are 5 main formulas that can be used, and all of them are named after the person that came up with the formula.

  • Gellish2: 191.5 – .007 x age^2 = MHR
  • Fairburn: 201 – .63 x age for women = MHR
    OR 208 – .80 x age for men = MHR
  • Gellish: 206.9 – (o.67 x age) = MHR
  • Tanaka: 208 – (0.7 x age) = MHR

This calculator uses the Tanaka formula as it’s been proven to be the most accurate when looking at entire populations. This does not mean it will be most accurate for you but the formulas only vary by +/- 5%, so it should be of no concern.

So, what zone should you train in? That depends on your goals. The most common zone is the cardio zone. This is where most people that are running or doing other cardio exercises reside at. For the most fat-burning zone, you should focus on implementing HIIT (High-intensity interval training). This causes you to vary your heart rate from V02 max to moderate levels.