Dr. Herman Falsetti believes there are two kinds of exercisers in this world: the minority who know what they’re doing and the majority who don’t.
Falsetti takes a pair of calipers and gives my bare chest a painful pinch.
“The biggest training breakthrough in the last 20 years is training in heart-rate zones,” says Falsetti, squeezing the calipers that will glean what percent of me is fat. “Training in heart-rate zones tells you exactly what exercise effort you need to accomplish what you want–improve your cardiovascular fitness, increase your speed and power, really burn fat.”
Falsetti affixes the calipers to my stomach and assesses my own needs.
“Hmm. A bit more to grab here.”
A cardiologist, Falsetti offers fitness assessments and personalized training prescriptions through his Irvine, Calif., company Health Corp. He has opened the eyes and improved the training of Tour de France champions, Olympians and world-class triathletes. More important to me, Falsetti has also helped plenty of ordinary folks become ruthlessly efficient in attaining simpler goals, like being able to look down and see their feet.
“It all boils down to knowing what you’re doing, monitoring your effort to get what you want,” says Falsetti, ushering me onto a treadmill. “We’ve seen dramatic improvements–in weight loss and performance–once people start training scientifically.”
Better still, you don’t need to be a scientist to accomplish this. All you need is a measure of your anaerobic threshold, and the ability to read a wristwatch–in this case, a heart-rate monitor. This monitor is a strap that wraps around your chest, registers your heart rate and illuminates it, in beats per minute, on a watch on your wrist.
In one study of exercisers, those who used heart-rate monitors when exercising lost 30 percent to 40 percent more weight than exercisers who didn’t use monitors.
Monitors offer no guarantees, says Dr. James Rippe, who conducted the study. But they do seem to help.
“The reality was the exercisers who used the monitors were more likely to stick with their exercise program,” says Rippe, an associate professor of medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine and one of the country’s leading authorities on health and fitness. “Most beginning exercisers tend to exercise at too high a heart rate–so they find exercise a miserable experience and they quit. Probably the most important thing you can do is exercise at the proper level, and that’s what a heart-rate monitor helps you do.”
The science behind effective heart-rate training isn’t very complicated. Anaerobic threshold–AT for short–is the crux of scientific training. Scientists define AT as the point where lactic acid begins accumulating in the blood faster than it can be broken down. Exercisers know it as the onset of meltdown, the familiar burning in the muscles and lungs.
Know your AT, watch your heart-rate monitor as you walk, run, bike or swim and keep your heart rate exactly where it needs to be to best burn fat or strengthen your heart or build speed and power.
“You don’t have to experience pain to get great fitness benefits,” says Saul Blau, an exercise physiologist. “With heart-rate training you learn how to exercise smarter, not harder.”
Blau is the founder of METAbeat, a Laguna Niguel, Calif., company specializing in fitness assessment and heart-rate training. He knows how many a well-meaning exercise program begins. Inspired by gelatinous body parts, John Doe embarks on a fitness quest. Enthused, he reckons harder is better. In short order, Doe is so physically and mentally beat up that he quits.
Scientific training could have changed this sad ending.
“Heart-rate training lets you work within your own tolerance levels and abilities,” says Blau. “If your aim is just weight loss and sound cardiovascular fitness, you can stay in the first two lower effort zones. Unless you’re competitive, there’s really no reason to move up into the higher intensities.”
Simply looking to keep weight off and bump your cardiovascular fitness up a notch? Falsetti’s exercise prescription is deliciously attainable. Three days of aerobic exercise a week, 30 minutes a pop, two of these sessions in Zone 1, and one session in Zone 2.
Four to five days a week, 45 to 60 minutes per workout, would be better, says Falsetti. But this minimalist three-days-per-week schedule is still enough to reap substantial reward and rejuvenate an exercise program gone stale.
“People get into habits,” says Falsetti. “They run the same distance, at the same speed, every time. That’s why they’ve stopped getting results–your body now stresses to progress. And it’s boring. Heart-rate training offers variety, and variety puts excitement, and results, back into your training.”
And–for better, or worse–a heart-rate monitor doesn’t lie. It will keep you from going too hard and moving out of effective fat-burning effort. But it eliminates sloth too. “If you’re just going through the motions, it’s pretty much wasted time,” he says. “There is no training effect, and it burns very few calories.”
A scientific training program cannot proceed without a precise measure of AT. Explaining why, Falsetti ushers me onto the treadmill and starts me running.
There are formulas for determining AT–subtracting your age from 220, then multiplying that number by .85 is the most common one–and many people use them. Problem is, they are usually inaccurate, sometimes wildly so.
In his own studies with athletes, Falsetti found that ATs estimated by formulas were often as much as 20 beats per minute off the athlete’s actual AT. If you base your scientific training on an AT that isn’t yours, everything you do will be off.
“Without knowing your precise AT, you will not get the most out of your training program,” states Blau. “Accurate measurement is critical.”
Though elite athletes have thrived on AT testing and heart-rate training for 20 years, it’s still a new concept on the street. More facilities are offering AT testing, but they aren’t yet common, and the testing is often expensive, between $125 and $800, depending on the level of services.
But as the public gets wind of the benefits of heart-rate training, Blau sees this changing. Through METAbeat, Blau is trying to introduce accurate and less expensive AT testing into health clubs. He is also trying to persuade insurance companies to cover the cost of the testing, reckoning that they stand to save thousands of dollars with healthy clients who won’t require expensive heart surgery at age 40.
“If people start on a healthy lifestyle and exercise scientifically, heart disease can be set back 20 years,” says Blau.
Ten minutes after my treadmill test, Falsetti has my numbers. The news is pretty good. My body fat is 12 percent, and I am only 4 pounds over my ideal weight. And, with my all-important AT–170 beats a minute–in hand, I can take scientific aim at that unwanted flab.
Am I a world-beater? No. Do I care? No, again. The walls of Falsetti’s office are peppered with photos of hard-body athletes. But there are other pictures too–folks whose edges are softer, but their smiles are no less bright.
