DOES HEART RATE TRAINING WORK?

Well, in a word-- "Yes. Heck, yes!" 

Ok, why?  We believe, as do the vast majority of professional running coaches and world-class endurance athletes, that wearing a heart rate monitor should become as second nature to a runner as lacing up their shoes for a run.  Using a heart rate monitor will improve your running much quicker, with less possibilities of injuries, than simply relying on the old standby-- how you are feeling that day.  Employed properly, a heart rate monitor is like having a coach along for every workout.  It will help ensure that you train at an appropriate intensity—neither too hard, nor too easy. 

When it's time to work a bit harder, your heart rate monitor nudges you up to the right intensity. And on those days when you need to go easy, you can rely on it to keep you under control. Easy days are just as important as hard days, because they make it possible for you to fully recover.  Then you are able to truly work hard on your hard days-- maximizing your efforts and fitness gains.  (So that's how you get faster-- easy days!  Who knew?!) 

Each workout should have a specific purpose-- training a certain energy-system.  But most of us get caught in the rut of Comfortably Difficult Runs (CDR) on most days... a "No-Person's Land" of marginalized training gains.  Using a HRM will help you avoid this performance limiting training loop or Groundhog Day.  (The movie, not the holiday.)  The body needs change, new stimuli, to grow strong, go faster and go longer, on less energy.  Used correctly, your heart rate monitor helps you do what sometimes you don't realize you should do or your coach isn't there to advise you to do
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To improve your fitness, there are usually (3) main variables you can control and change.  Your HRM has the greatest impact on INTENSITY-- the most important of these variables in achieving your running goals.

1.  Frequency:  How often you exercise
2.  Duration:  How long the individual exercise sessions are.
3.  Intensity:  How challenging the individual exercise sessions are.

These variables remain the same whether you want to lose a couple of pounds or train for the Olympics. If you simply want to be healthy, a handful of easy workouts a week will do it, and a HRM is a "nice-to-have" gadget to make sure your runs truly are easy.  A HRM would also check to make sure you have adequately recovered from your previous workout, no matter how "easy" the perceived effort might be.  (The "will to improve" which runners embody can play tricks on the mind, disguising lingering fatigue from even "easy" runs.  But the heart and cardiovascular system don't lie-- eventually the truth becomes evident.  Usually this realization, even with a casual runner, comes in the form of injury, unusual fatigue, and loss of motivation or improvement.)

A Heart Rate Monitor (HRM) becomes a "must-have" training tool if your goal is to become more fit, or if you have goals such as racing faster, finishing a marathon, or max'ing out your PFT point total.    

Intensity is more difficult to target and is also the most important variable in achieving your goals. One way to measure intensity is to rely on how you feel when exercising by rating your effort as easy, moderate or hard. That's not a very accurate gauge. Mood swings, training partners, hydration, temperature, enthusiasm and other factors will influence your ratings.

A heart rate monitor makes achieving the right intensity of exercise much easier to determine. You decide what your heart rate will be for a given workout and then watch your monitor to make sure you reach it.  

In its simplest terms--  Want to get faster? Train with higher heart rates to build speed. Want to go farther? Train with lower heart rates to develop endurance.  In between, make sure your body/heart has adequately recovered before you run again.  A Heart Rate Monitor (HRM) helps you do all of these!