Exercise or physical activity can vary in intensity and therefore in conditioning effects. It’s important to exercise at appropriate levels of intensity for one’s current fitness. In aerobic exercise light intensity is sub-aerobic while moderate and vigorous intensities are both aerobic. Light intensity effort is most suited for warm-up and cool-down activity in aerobic conditioning. There are a number of methods used to measure aerobic exercise intensity.
Heart Rate and Talk Test Measures of Aerobic Exercise Intensity
The Mayo Clinic discusses common measures of aerobic exercise intensity:
- Moderate intensity should feel “somewhat hard”
- Breathing will be faster
- A light sweat will develop
- Some strain may be felt in the muscles
- The talk test – the exerciser can carry on a conversation using brief sentences but won’t be able to sing a song
In terms of heart rate vigorous-intensity activity occurs in the range of 70% to 85% of maximum heart rate while moderate-intensity exercise is roughly 55% to 70% of maximum heart rate. A rough estimate of a person’s maximum heart rate is obtained by subtracting age from 220. So a forty year old’s predicted max heart rate is 180 beats per minute. In this case, here are the target heart rate ranges: