Setting Training Zones

Zones define, per athlete, what "easy" and "hard" actually mean in heart rate, power, or speed. That gives you three things: you write one workout that fills in each athlete's own values, you can check afterwards whether a session was executed as intended, and you track an athlete's progress without making old schedules unreadable.

Zones per Sport

A multi-sport athlete gets their own zones per discipline: their running pace says nothing about their power on the bike. The tabs at the top filter the list by sport.

You set zones for:

• Swimming
• Cycling
• Running
• Walking

As a coach you add zones here. As a team admin you can save a zone set as a template and reuse it across athletes.

Zone Types

• Heart rate - Zones based on heart rate values (bpm)
• Power - Zones based on wattage (W)
• Speed - Zones based on speed (km/h)
• Pace - Zones based on pace (min/km or min/100m)

Zone Structure

Each zone contains:

• Abbreviation - Short code (e.g., EXT, INT, VO2max)
• Name - Full name of the zone
• Hashtag - What you use to call the zone into a workout (e.g., #EXT), see Using Zones in Your Workouts
• Lower limit - Minimum value for the zone
• Upper limit - Maximum value for the zone

Threshold Values

Per zone set you can set threshold values:

• Aerobic threshold - Border from aerobic to mixed effort
• Anaerobic threshold - Lactate threshold / FTP
• VO2max - Maximum oxygen uptake value
• Maximum - Maximum heart rate/power/speed

Adding Zones

1. Click Add Zones
2. Select the sport
3. Choose the zone type (heart rate, power, speed)
4. Fill in the threshold values
5. The zones are automatically calculated

Updating Zones After a Test

Update the zones as soon as an athlete improves. Coachbox does not overwrite the old values but keeps them with the date on which they applied. A workout from last winter therefore still shows the zones of that time, while everything you schedule from now on uses the new values.

That keeps your review accurate: you see what the athlete had to run back then, not what they would have to run today.

If you run lactate tests regularly, you can derive the zones straight from them. See Lactate Testing.

Using Zones in Your Workouts

This is where the biggest time saving sits. Instead of typing numbers per athlete, you refer to the zone and let Coachbox fill in the values. That way you build one generic library that works for your entire roster.

Why Work With Hashtags

Say you write an interval session for ten athletes. Without hashtags you type ten different heart rates, and after every new test you start over. That is not only work, it is where mistakes creep in: one number copied wrong and an athlete trains a full week in the wrong zone.

With a hashtag you write the workout once and it is correct for everyone. If an athlete's zones change, their future workouts follow automatically.

How It Works

Type a zone's hashtag in the description of a workout or of a free segment:

5x4min #vo2

As you type, Coachbox suggests the zones that apply to that sport and that date, so you never use a tag that points nowhere. When the athlete sees the workout, it reads:

5x4min VO2 (172-184)

Those values come from the zone set of that athlete, for the sport of the workout, valid on the date it is scheduled. The same workout assigned to another athlete therefore shows different numbers, without you changing a thing.

With Exportable Segments

If you work with exportable workouts, you set a zone or a percentage of a threshold as the target per block instead of a fixed value. There too, the individual athlete's thresholds are applied when you schedule the workout. That is the route to take when the workout has to reach a watch or smart trainer.

Building a Generic Library

1. Create a workout with hashtags or with exportable segments, without concrete numbers
2. Save it to your library
3. Schedule it for any athlete

Every athlete sees their own intensities. A period spanning several weeks works the same way: you schedule it in one go and each workout fills itself in per athlete.

Checking Whether the Workout Was Executed

Zones also work the other way around. In statistics you see how long a workout, or a whole month, was spent in each zone. That lets you check whether an easy run was actually run easy, instead of relying on how the athlete felt.

Good to Know

• The hashtag is case-insensitive: #ext and #EXT both work
• If a hashtag does not match a zone, only the # character disappears and the text stays
• The suggested zones follow the sport and the date of the workout. For a library workout without a date, Coachbox shows your current zones
• Only give a zone a hashtag if you want to use it in workouts. A zone without a hashtag works fine, you just cannot refer to it

Tips

• Update your zones after a test or performance test
• Use consistent zone names and hashtags across your athletes, otherwise a library workout will not work for everyone