Heart-rate zones: why “a hard session” isn’t the same as “a lot of minutes”

Two hours on the court don’t mean twice the load of one. It depends on how hard the heart worked. That’s exactly what heart-rate zones address — and once you start noticing them, you’ll train smarter.

What heart-rate zones are

Heart-rate zones are intensity bands derived from your maximum heart rate (HRmax). Each band trains slightly different abilities — from recovery through base endurance to the anaerobic maximum. They’re usually split into five zones by percentage of HRmax.

How to find your maximum heart rate

The table formula “220 − age” is only a rough estimate and for many people is off by 10–15 beats. More accurate is HRmax from a real measurement — say the highest value from a hard match or test. That’s why NEXT8 warns you when HRmax is missing: without it the zones (and therefore the analyses) are inaccurate.

Why minutes aren’t enough

An hour of easy jogging and an hour of intervals can’t be compared, even if they last the same. Whoever counts only minutes or kilometres underrates hard sessions and overrates easy ones. HR-weighted load (e.g. TRIMP) solves this by counting each minute according to the zone it happened in — time in high zones gets a higher weight.

Floorball and zones

Floorball is a sport of repeated bursts: short maximal drives alternating with short rest. So it takes place mainly in the high zones, but in intervals — and the classic “count your kilometres” doesn’t capture it at all. That’s exactly why HR-weighted load is a fairer measure for a floorball player than time or distance.

How NEXT8 works with it

NEXT8 calculates training load from your real heart rate and zones based on your HRmax, not from a table. A hard session thus gets the appropriate weight, which then shows up in analytics as well as in the load ratio (ACWR) and injury prevention. You see not just how much you did, but how demanding it really was.