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Aerobic exercise

uring any type of exercise the main issue, is to firstly find an exercise that you enjoy. Whether it be running with your dog or mountain biking or a team sport, in terms of the benefits it will give to you’re overall health and fitness and improvements in off piste performance. The table below gives heart rate guidelines to ensure that you will benefit from whatever form of exercise you may be taking. In the long term combining heart rate with your effort level is far more effective. Once you have calculated lets say at 160 beats per minute (bpm) that your effort level is 7/10 (see scale below):

1-2 No activity
2-4 Easy level
4-6 Moderate level
6-8 Working hard but controllable
8-10 Out and out level

You will not have to take your heart rate every time, but just rely on your effort level at that time. There is no reason to go above 8/10 effort level, as above this point exercise will become anaerobic (not using oxygen). If you do it has a great effect on improving fitness levels but if you are not used to this level of training it’s a killer. The best form of training in terms of general conditioning, weight loss and fitness is Fartleking (meaning interval training, not wind control).

Take any form of exercise 20 minutes to 1hr and within that, change the intensity levels, from easy, to hard to medium etc. etc. Not only will you burn more calories but also improve fitness levels far quicker and it represents the aerobic requirements off piste touring far more accurately.

The table calculates heart rates by taking 220 – your age for the maximum heart rate. The two ranges are 50% and 85% of that maximum. (There is a variable of + or – 10 beats per minute so remember to correlate with your effort level). Remember this is a basic guideline; there are far more detailed tests available:

Age 20 ideal aerobic range is 100-170 beats per minute.

25: 98-166

30: 95-162

35: 93-157

40: 90-153

45: 88-149

50: 85-145

55: 83-140

60: 80-136

65: 78-132

70: 75-128

75: 73-123

80: 70-119

85: 68-115