Why Heart Rate Training Is Often Overrated (And How I Coach Instead)

Heart rate training has been part of endurance sports for decades. For a lot of athletes, it’s the first metric they ever use to structure their training. And while heart rate can be useful, I think it’s often overrated as a primary tool for both training and racing.

The biggest issue is that heart rate is reactive, not proactive. It tells you how your body is responding to the work you’ve already done, not what you’re doing in the moment. Pace and power, on the other hand, measure actual output. If I ask an athlete to run at a certain pace or ride at a certain wattage, that’s a real, measurable workload. Heart rate may line up with it....or it may not.

Heart rate is also influenced by a long list of factors that have nothing to do with fitness: fatigue, sleep, stress, heat, hydration, and caffeine, just to name a few. Two identical workouts on different days can produce very different heart rate responses. When athletes rely too heavily on heart rate, they often end up second-guessing good training because the numbers don’t look “right.”

Another problem is that many heart rate zones are far too generic. Most are based on population averages, but athletes aren’t average. Two runners with the same max heart rate can have very different aerobic thresholds and efficiencies. Using the same zone cutoffs for both doesn’t make much physiological sense.

This is why I prefer a combination of RPE with pace/power. RPE teaches athletes to understand effort — breathing, rhythm, muscular tension, and control. Pace and power provide objective output so sessions are executed correctly. Together, they allow athletes to adapt to terrain, weather, and race-day conditions without forcing numbers that don’t fit the day.

It’s also worth noting that most elite athletes aren’t training or racing by heart rate in real time. They focus on feel and output, then use heart rate afterward to analyze trends. If heart rate were the best primary tool, we’d see elites glued to it during races. We don’t.

That doesn’t mean heart rate is useless. I still look at it closely for things like efficiency, aerobic decoupling during long sessions, resting heart rate, and HRV trends to gauge recovery and long-term progress. When athletes rely on RPE, execute with pace or power, and use heart rate to assess trends, training becomes simpler, more consistent, and ultimately more effective.