What happens if you exceed your maximum heart rate? Risks of pushing yourself to the limit

Despite the fact that potentiometers have become a tool to quantify effort, heart rate remains a very useful tool for understanding the body's response to effort and avoiding reaching the maximum heart rate, which could lead us to face health risks.

Maximum heart rate, when your heart reaches the red zone

Traditionally, heart rate has been used to quantify the intensity of pedaling. An intensity that has a limit, which is set by the maximum heart rate, that is, the highest rate at which the heart can beat. As the name suggests, under normal conditions, this figure cannot be exceeded no matter how much effort we make.

The maximum heart rate is a factor that decreases with age, to a lesser extent in well-trained individuals, and, in principle, it does not make any difference in terms of performance between someone who reaches very high maximum heart rate and someone who reaches lower levels. It simply marks the red line of the maximum rate at which the heart can contract.

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To quantify this figure, the formula 220-age is often used, which gives us our theoretical maximum heart rate. However, this figure was developed taking into account a sedentary population, so in athletes, there is usually a lot of variability from one individual to another. The only way to know it with full certainty is by performing a maximum incremental effort test.

In any case, reaching maximum heart rate is not usually common, and it is only usually achieved when making a strong effort while out of shape, for example, the typical sprints at the beginning of the season where cardiovascular adaptation is still poor and heart rate spikes to a minimum. Once the base period has passed and we improve our fitness, the body needs the heart to beat less quickly to provide the nutrients required by the muscles, and not even in competition, except perhaps in a sprint uphill at the limit, do we usually see maximum heart rates.

However, it is possible to exceed maximum heart rate despite what its name indicates. A clear example is the cyclist Ondrej Cink who a few years ago in the World Cup race held in Vallnord was forced to stop when he began to see peaks of 230 heartbeats on his cycle computer. Peaks caused by a heart arrhythmia for which Cink was operated on but without the desired result.

Precisely, this is where the question of the risk of pushing the body to the maximum comes in, especially if we do not have the proper preparation. The fact that the heart beats at its maximum rate should not be a problem for healthy individuals, however, there are heart conditions that only manifest when the heart approaches its maximum heart rate, such as the mentioned arrhythmias.

That is why every athlete who is going to engage in high-intensity activity, especially those over 35 years old or those with a family history of heart problems or who themselves have risk factors such as hypertension, high cholesterol, overweight, smokers, etc., should undergo a stress test before starting their training, in which the body's response when approaching the limit is checked under controlled laboratory conditions.

This way, we guarantee ourselves to a high percentage, never 100% as there are conditions that do not even manifest with these types of tests, that we can push ourselves to the maximum without fear of suffering a heart problem that, if it were to happen in the middle of the mountains riding alone, could pose a serious risk.