I am just about to push the button on a Wahoo Elemnt and debating how useful the add on for heart rate and cadence might be to an MTB rider – aside from the new toy oooh look at that for a week feature.

I am looking to up my fitness so the training word is starting to creep into my thinking but not sure how / why / what cadence and heart rate have to do with that in MTB terms and how useful in real life.

Thanks in advance collective consciousness.

James

A HRM is very useful especially if you’re training, but you can get a seperate one for £20-25 of you didn’t want to shell out for the wahoo tickr.

Heart rate is a really useful training aid, cadence can be but is probably less useful IME unless your pedaling speed is wildly variable or inefficient.

Thanks for the rapid response, I am a bit numpty when it comes to training, been a dirty word around me to busy smiling but I have to get my sh*t together and get fitter hence the gearing up as it were.

Why do you say heart rate is good to have? Have always considered coming back alive a good measure until now but know i need to evolve.

🙂

James

In January 2017, using a HRM made me realise just how unfit I was… Even though I had lost ~10Kg to drop to ~85Kg over the previous ~6 months, just walking downstairs and round to our garage made my heartrate race up to ~100bpm from ~75 while sitting at my PC. For the first few months, I wouldn’t take much for my heart rate to hit 170+.

It wasn’t long before I fitted my Lidl cadence sensor and discovered that naturally, I was a “spinner” happy doing 100-110rpm.

I then got my first taste of training by power with my Direto in January this year, before recently buying a 4iiii to use outdoors. I then discovered I produce far more power closer to ~80rpm cadence while sitting and below ~70rpm, it was beneficial to stand up to improve power.

I still keep a slight eye on my heart rate during rides, more so on big rides for me like Friday’s first 100-miler, where I purposely try to minimise time above my Lactate Threshold Heart Rate of ~171bpm. But I’m far more interested in my power output on climbs and what my cadence is in real time.

I know that currently I’m capable of averaging ~290W for 20 minutes, which will very comfortably get me up any cat4 or cat3 hill I’ve tried. Over an hour, I’m currently capable of averaging ~247W etc.

https://cricklesorg.wordpress.com/ was suggested by someone here in a thread last year and I’ve found it very useful to monitor my fitness and try to keep improving it.

Two contrasting rides from the last week…

https://www.strava.com/activities/1593025651/analysis

https://www.strava.com/activities/1595555040/analysis

First ride is me going “full beans” up hills, dependent upon traffic, overheating in a jacket and no water with me (which became the deciding factor to head home).

Second ride is me pacing myself for my first ever century.

Power data tells you much more about those rides and in the first one, shows what happens when I go beyond my modest MAMIL talent… There’s no way I could keep up that initial power effort, I’m going deep into the red!

It’s a good guage of your effort.

If you want to train properly/seriously/efficiently it will help you make much better use of your time.

If you’re not very fit though, and you don’t have high or specific target, you may not benefit from one.

Knowing your HR allows you to know how much effort you’re putting in and for proper training you’ll need to know your heart rate zones – for instance I’m doing some ‘base mile’ training at the moment which involves 2+ hours in zone 2 or 65-75% of max heart rate. Without a HRM its hard to stick to the right heart rate.

£23 on Amazon. https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B01M8QD9Z4/ref=oh_aui_i_d_old_o0_img?ie=UTF8&psc=1

For mountain biking it’s not going to make you nail those berms any quicker, but it can give you a view of how fit/unfit you are and calories burned (better than without).

However getting fitter will help massively with the downs, if you get to the top blowing you won’t have a decent amount of energy to get back down and concentrate.

I used the HR monitor more for road rides, but now I’ve hit a level of fitness I’m happy with I take less notice of it now I’m mainly mountain biking, all I take from it is calories burned to give me a rough view of how many toblerone peices I can shovel down.

All depends on what you’re trying to achieve which you haven’t really made clear other than “up my fitness”. To do what, long endurance races or enduros or just general? Where do you think you lack at the moment?

I’m currently an average fit rider of 20 miles plus all happy, but upping game to do 80 miles one hit this year and SDW next year and hence more focused around the duration than the outright racey speed thing. So to answer your question more endurance focused.

I don’t road bike, simply don’t have one, rarely have access to exercise static bike but could easily get more access via cheap ebay ad.

I have the evenings I can ride in and have Mrs OK to do so (helps maintain peace) and hence the idea of training more in the same time helps, what I am not clear about, give the really useful feedback above – huge thanks.

Is how to go about making more fitness improving use of time, predominantly with HRM from what I can see above, less reference to cadence I notice.

Thanks

James

I wouldn’t bother with cadence unless fitting to a road bike. The Garmin cadence device I had with my Edge 510 fell off my MTB somewhere. I don’t think they really designed for the rigours of MTB.

Forgot to mention earlier that I bought one of those Coospo H6 HRMs that ta11pau1 linked to at the start of the year, for its dual ANT+ and Bluetooth transmitting. So far, it’s been more reliable than the Polar H7 I bought Feb 2017.

Yeah don’t bother with cadence, it’ll fall off.

HRM would be good for endurance training, Google up some workouts.

Get the heart rate option if you want to do some training. Very useful tool to properly gauge the effort you’re putting in (sometimes the mind can play tricks on you).    A power meter is also a great training aid, maybe something to consider further down the line.

It’s a good guage of your effort.

I don’t have a PM on my bike, but I know my HR corresponding to my power zones.   Yesterday I rode  an MTB Marathon using HR as a gauge to ride sub threshold for 3.5hrs.  I use it for training sometimes in the same way.

use a garmin cadence and HR monitor.  I don’t train but I find it useful for knowing if I’m working too hard on the climbs.

The Wahoo cadence sensor can be taken out of its holder and stuck down your sock, no chance of losing it. It even survives the washing machine, twice. 🙂

I reckon the Wahoo bundle of speed, cadence, and tickr that comes with the ELEMNT is pretty good value. I use the HR on most rides, with the LEDs set to show the HR Zone. I find it a good measure of fitness, though my ideas of lots of zone 2 training to shift some fat aren’t working out – I’d need to be pootling along a canal path to stay in zone 2. 😀

I also like cadence, helps for pacing climbs. I’m a high cadence spinner for the most part, and have got used to having it on my road bike, so decided to go for the bundle and pop it on my MTB. I don’t see how it could ever fall off. It’s held on really securely around the crank with a couple of zip ties – it’s going nowhere.

£50 for a good HR sensor, speed sensor, and cadence sensor – seems like a good idea. The HR sensor is almost free.

 I find it a good measure of fitness, though my ideas of lots of zone 2 training to shift some fat aren’t working out – I’d need to be pootling along a canal path to stay in zone 2.

Funnily enough that’s exactly what I do for my zone 2 training, luckily there’s a 6 mile long uninterrupted towpath a couple of minutes away from me so a few trips up and down this does the job, did 2.5hrs yesterday and 30 miles.

Mine isn’t for fat loss (although any that does go is a plus) but for basic fitness, I’ve not done any fitness training for many years. Even with a HR monitor it’s hard to stay in zone 2, keep on having to remind myself to slow down! 🙂

“Zone 2” heart rate riding will use a higher proportion of required Calories directly from fat, but you should use more Calories overall on a ride in higher zones, over a similar distance / ride time.

Whilst hr on its own is useful it’s only one metric and one which is prone to variations as a result of quite a few influences not just fitness. These can make a massive difference if you’re not aware of them – if you’re stressed or becoming ill (pre more noticeable symptoms) etc your hr will be out and you’ll either undertrain or overtrain to compensate.

The “Fast Talk” podcast has a couple of really good episodes about hr vs power vs hr and power for training. (Which is where I got the above from so if it’s wrong then it’s their fault!)

You could look at the PowerCal hr based power meter, good reviews on the dcrainmaker site so long as it’s more steady state efforts and not short duration sprint intervals.

Having the HRM zones on the top LEDs is a great quick indicator for me and helps me pace up climbs. I went for the Bolt bundle and am glad I did.

Im only bothered about cadence on my drop bar bikes, mainly because MTB pedalling speeds vary due to my style.

I find cadence useful on my road bike, but doubt I’d pay it much attention on the MTB.

HRM is definitely useful on just about any bike IMO/IME.

I bought the Bonty 300 cycle computer which was £17 from memory a few days ago. Got it after reading a thread on here a few days back.

Got a second-hand Garmin HR sensor for zwift and it links fine with the 300. Got a cheap Ant+ cadence /speed sensor coming from China for it too. It’s a good, cheap setup and worth thinking about.

Zwift made me realise how important HR is…..and what happens if I over cook it… Lol

EDIT: Yeah, £17.99

https://www.evanscycles.com/bontrager-trip-300-computer-EV222991

HRM is pretty much essential for me.

whether cycling or hiking I find that if I don’t exceed my aerobic zone (70 to 80 percent of 220 minus my age), then I don’t blow through my (glygocen?) energy reserves.

plenty of books by sally Edwards on amazon, etc.

doubly essential once you explore interval training.

i think you’ll find the cadence feature useful if you’re on long climbs…gives you something to focus on, and the cadence units tend to incorporate the speedometer too.

Heart rate is useful as a simple way to start structured training without going to the expense of a power meter. Cadence is great if you’re a numbers geek but less useful on a mtb.

If you want to dip your toes in the water with heart rate I’m selling my Mio wristband HRM here:

https://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/mio-link-wrist-band-hrm/

The ELEMNT’s great piece of kit, mine arrived last week. The side LEDs for heart rate zones are an easy way to keep track. There’s also a £50 cashback offer on it at the moment.

whether cycling or hiking I find that if I don’t exceed my aerobic zone (70 to 80 percent of 220 minus my age), then I don’t blow through my (glygocen?) energy reserves.

So you’ve actually got no idea where you are in relationship to your aerobic zone.

220-age is a wildly vague and inaccurate “one size fits virtually no one” guideline, especially amognst even mildly active people. Do a proper suite of max/resting/threshold testing and find out what your numbers actually are. Even if you are ~10 bpm out, it’s probably still more accurate than 220-age. There are plenty of simple testing protocols available on the net.

Cadence, just count. If you are on a long steady climb or flat bit, where its actually worth hitting a cadence (any cadence!) it’s only a matter of counting pedal strokes for ~10-12 seconds. After a few rides, you’ll get a feel for it and need to do the logic check (of counting) less often.

A HRM is very useful, it’s not instantaneously accurate regarding exertion in the way that a power meter is but for steady efforts rather than sprint intervals it’s more than good enough for  non-pros.

Heart zones are not simply a percentage of MHR or age adjusted MHR. You need two figures: your resting heart rate (RHR) and your MHR. The difference is your working heart range (WHR). You work out your heart zones as RHR + whatever percentage of WHR. So RHR of 60, MHR of 180 gives WHR = 120. Aerobic threshold is 75% so 75% of 120 is 90, add RHR to that to give a figure of 150bpm. If you were 40 then the incorrect MHR -age formula would give  (220 – 40) * .75 = 135 which is a 10% difference.

Edit: as per another thread I reckon I’m chronically fatigued from over two years of long distance events and not recovering properly. Being a typical bloke I refused to accept what the data was telling me. My commuting times went from 43-48 minutes to the 52-59 minute range despite “pushing” as hard as I could. I’d be going to bed at 9:30 as I was knackered. I’ll use my HRM for the commute to make sure I keep my heart rate down in zone 2, yes it will be frustrating, I’ll get no Strava cups or kudos but …

I don’t race (other than for a fun day out and I wouldn’t really call what I’ve done “racing”), I don’t train, I just keep riding. HRM and cadence came with my Garmin. Cadence told me nothing and HRM told me I was alive. They now sit in a box unused.

Those I ride with who are faster than me on singletrack and downhill type stuff are so mostly down to way more confidence and skills. XCish night rides have more of the fit crew who sprint up some steep climbs that I might plod up, but to be honest I have no ambition to do that. I catch them up on the right gradient and all equal on the singletrack. It’s just about enjoying the ride for me, not the burn.

Aerobic threshold is 75%

Depends how many zones you use/which research paper you read last and how you define the limits of each zone 😉

@ghostlymachine – true but the point was that the stated formula was incorrect in fact it gives a figure that is the lower end of the threshold zone from the particular set I chose. If @greatbeardone used the figure from 70% of 220 -age then he’d be training at tempo (or whatever you wish to call the next zone down) rather than threshold.

@deadkenny want to offload your Garmin HRM?

For Lactate Threshold I used the “ride as hard you can for 30 minutes and then take your average heart rate for the last twenty minutes” method.

Crickles.org as mentioned earlier also gives you a rolling threshold based on your performance.

I ordered a bluetooth HRM to go with my edge having followed this thread, thought it might make for some interesting commutes!

Any good sources of info on HRM training? I know there’s loads, but any particularly good ones?

HRM gives me an indication of how I am doing, especially on a commute or local loop, I can compare efforts mostly and see which zones I’m hitting. It’s also a little warning sign that I’ve pushed to hard or getting a bit ill – but only on repeat activities.

Cadence was a lot of use with 1x as it really lets me see how and when I’m pedalling and how that is relating to speed, I don’t have it fitted to the new bike but it helped me work out where I was good and bad previously and how things related – did the same 4 day race 1x and 2x with similar max speeds etc.and a similar cadence due to riding smoother and not putting in effort when it wasn’t needed.

Not exact science but some more info to work with

Any good sources of info on HRM training? I know there’s loads, but any particularly good ones?

What training can you commit to and what do you have to work with?

Thank you all for the fabulously useful feedback, very cool

James

I don’t tend to bother with the mtb. I wear a heart rate monitor, but never look, mainly so strava will give me a suffer score. On the road bike I aways record cadence and heart rate, but to be honest, I can pretty much gauge effort. I really fancy getting a power meter for the road though.

For training purposes Cadence can be useful – but more on a turbo than in the real world. If you want a good programme then try http://www.MTB.Fitness – it is £30 but I reckon that’s worth it!