Introducing Heart Rate Zones in the Full Potential App

Well, that's Heart Rate Month just about done, and I've enjoyed it a good deal more than I expected to. Three posts in, and the best part hasn't been the writing — it's been watching people actually go off and do something with it.

Over the past few weeks a number of the runners I coach have gone and tested themselves. Some have done the homemade version: a track, a watch, and a hard 800m with nobody around to see it. Others have booked themselves into a local lab for a proper lactate threshold test and are waiting on the numbers coming back.

If you've done a max heart rate test — properly, all the way to the top — I salute you. I mean that sincerely. It is a genuinely hard experience, and pushing yourself that deep into the discomfort for the sake of a number takes a particular kind of stubbornness. Most people find a reason to stop before they get there.

If you went the lab route instead, that's hard in an entirely different way. Mask on, treadmill climbing, someone watching a screen and telling you to keep going. There's no hiding place in either version.

One piece of advice that applies to both: turn up fresh. A max test on tired legs isn't a max test, it's just an unpleasant Tuesday. Build it into your week on a day when you've slept, eaten and haven't got a hard session in your legs from the day before. You only want to do this occasionally, so give yourself the best chance of getting a real number when you do.

Why I Still Watch My Heart Rate

I haven't had a test done in years. I'm training for my own benefit these days rather than chasing anything in particular, and I've no plans to strap myself to a treadmill any time soon.

But I still watch my heart rate on threshold sessions on the elliptical. And here's what I find genuinely useful about it — I can feel the difference between being properly in the zone and sitting just underneath it. Not from the screen. From my chest and my breathing. The number simply confirms what I already suspected.

That's the real prize with heart rate training, and it takes a while to arrive. You stop reading the watch for instructions and start recognising the feeling, at which point the watch becomes a second opinion rather than the boss.

It still catches me out. There are days where I feel like I'm working desperately hard and the number has barely shifted. That's worth paying attention to as well — usually it's telling me something about my sleep, or my week, or how much life I've had recently, rather than anything about the session itself.

And over weeks and months, it's one of the more honest ways of tracking what your training is actually costing you. Load and volume, measured in something more truthful than miles.

It's Already Sat in the App

Which brings me to the easy way of doing all of the above.

There's a heart rate zone creator inside the Full Potential app. Available on iOS or Android. You put your numbers in, it does the sums, and you come away with your zones laid out properly — no spreadsheet, no re-doing the maths every time your fitness moves.

It isn't new, incidentally. It's been in there since February. I've simply done a fairly poor job of mentioning it, which is a very Full Potential problem to have, and Heart Rate Month seemed like the moment to put that right.

The other thing it quietly solves is the mid-run problem. Working your zones out is one job; remembering what they were when you're three miles in and breathing hard is another entirely. They live in your pocket now, so you can just look.

It's free to use. If you want to save more than one test, we ask for a small one-off payment, and that also unlocks unlimited saves across some of the other tools in the app. I'd rather tell you that upfront than let you discover it halfway through. It costs £1.99.

How It Works

The app walks you through the whole thing, and it shouldn't take more than a few minutes.

• Your resting heart rate. If you wear anything that tracks it — a watch, an Oura ring, whatever's on your wrist — you've already got this number and you can just type it in. If you haven't, log it each morning and the app will build an average for you over time.

• Your max heart rate. This is the bit that requires effort on your part. The app walks you through both of the tests I covered in the last post — the hill and the 800m — so you don't need this blog open in another tab while you're doubled over at the side of a track.

• A sense-check. If you know full well you left something in the tank, you can nudge the figures. Most of us stop a few beats short of our genuine max, because going all the way there is a skill in itself.

• Your zones. It builds them, draws you a graph, and you're away.

  
  

A Guide, Not Gospel

Now the caveat, and it's the same one I'd give you sat across a table.

These zones are a guide. They are not the unlimited source of truth about your running, and you shouldn't treat them as such. A number is part of the picture, never the whole of it.

So run them alongside the talk test, particularly in the first few weeks. If your easy zone says you're bang on but you can't string a sentence together, the zone is wrong — not your lungs. If your threshold zone has you comfortably chatting away, that's too low. Adjust it. The zones and the feeling have to agree with each other, and when they don't, the feeling usually wins.

Co-pilot, not pilot. You're still flying the plane.

What's Next

There's a version 2.0 in the works. It'll open up for our charity runners first — they'll get their training plan in the app alongside everything else — and once that's settled we'll expand it out to other runners.

I'll be straight with you about the timeline, because I'd rather do that than over-promise: we're a small company building something a bit different, and while that's genuinely exciting, it does mean things take longer than any of us would like. It'll come. Just not tomorrow.

And if you use the zone creator and something feels off — or there's something missing you'd want in there — please tell us. We're small enough that feedback actually changes what gets built, which isn't something most apps can say.

Thanks for Heart Rate Month

That's the three posts done: why you'd bother, how to get your numbers right, and the easiest way to put it into practice.

Training efficiently and training smart is the entire point of this. Not training harder — harder isn't better, it never has been — but training in the right places, for the right reasons, with some idea of what you're actually asking your body to do. Heart rate is one of the better tools for that, and now you've got somewhere to put the numbers.

If this month's been useful, do share it — with a training partner, your club, whoever might get something out of it. It helps us more than you'd think.

Thinking about an autumn race? If you want heart rate training built properly into your plan from day one — zones set correctly, sessions that actually fit together — drop me a line. We'll build a block that gets you to the start line fit, fresh and ready to run your best. Book a coaching package

Related reading: The Value of Training to Heart Rate · Getting Heart Rate Training Right · Summer Running: Training Smart in the Heat