Maximum Heart Rate = 220 - Age : How well has this worked for me over the years ?

The most common predictor of maximum heart is 220 - Age.

In this video, I examine the origins of the formula and show you the first Polar watches that I used to record my heart rate from 1993 onwards.

I then discuss how well my actual observed heart rate each year from 1993 to 2020 has compared to the 220-Age formula and in what sort of activities I achieved these highest heart rates.

The Surprising History of the “HRmax=220-age” Equation
Robert A. Robergs and Roberto Landwehr

Fox SM, III, Naughton JP, Haskell WL. Physical activity and the prevention of coronary heart disease. Ann Clin Res. 1971;3:404–432.

Subscriber count at time of upload: 1304

#MaxHeartRate #220MinusAge

[michaelb]

I have only have the HR functionality on a watch for the last couple of years but I can see a huge drop from early 2019 runs to now. I should have a max of 183, maxed out at 187 in 2019 and quite a consistent 170 last year. Can't really put that down to age, the amount of running I do has increased fourfold so fitness in general has increased.

[yllzhmr]

I have only a years worth of HR data 🙈. For what it’s worth my max HR by formula would be 184 bpm, and my max of 2020 was indeed 184!! Like you, similar observation that fitter I am the harder it is to hit max. Start of 2020 I was way less fit and regularly hitting 180s on all out 5k efforts now I’m low to mid 170s at most.

[garysailors]

220-56 (for another few days at least!)= 164. I did some strides followed by hills last week and reached 166, My highest recent HR was 170 on a 10k PR run just before Christmas. I use 171 as my Max for calculating HR zones right now so that seems reasonable given my current relatively high fitness.

[zhozhforever]

Seems like if you train hard with high volume particulary for longer events like marathon you can't reach max heart rate because you loose your ability to deal with high lactate values. Some anaerobic work and reduced milage can get back upto 10 bpm or even more. Sometimes lower hr can also indicate overtraining - need to check blood especially cortisol level which can indicate high training load. For my recent 10k hr max was 169. After 2 months of relatively easier and much faster training i could reach 177-180 on shorter races. Also 10k and even 5k are not best distances to evaluate max hr due to high lactate accumulation can prevent raising hr to its maximum level. Best hr test is probably racing 1000m.

[Nonixification]

2019: 196 (age 31)
2021: 193 (age 33)

[garylq]

I'm an outlier. At 54yo I still regularly exceed 200bpm in short races and workouts. In the physiology lab at the University of Exeter I averaged 203bpm at 15km/h last year. My max is about 210bpm. Unfortunately I only have 3 years of accurate data, so I have no idea how it's changed over the years. My resting HR is fairly average for a runner, usually around 45-48bpm.

[fastrax]

I don't train by ref to heart rate but funny that today I failed to turn off my Tom Tom after a 4 mile run after which I drove home 5 miles. So as a 72 year old runner with over 125, 000 miles in the legs it showed HR splits as followed. 165 168 164 161....that was running....then driving 187 191 186 185 178. Which suggests that driving is more stressful than running, no?

[joegavelle]

I’m 50 been using heart rate since 2000 when I started running seriously. In 2000 it was 186 still get that high on a Zwift race but about 177 running

[Rosenrot]

Been tracking my mhr for several years also, started off with monitoring when mountain climbing keeping to a max of 160, adjusting pace. But the last 3 years I'm still hitting the same mostly on Zwift bike at 173 when pushing on sprint's. I usually just doing maf so keeping it in zone 2 or lower, which is easy for me. I'm 51 btw, occasionally on purpose will max my hr to zone 5+ just to see how quickly I can recover. Check out Dr Stephen Seiler on here, quite informative on hr studies.

[AncoraImparoPiper]

Is this max HR over a particular duration e.g. 20 min or is it a simple instantaneous max HR?