Zone 2 heart rate: how to find yours, with a chart by age

Zone 2 heart rate is usually 60 to 70% of your maximum heart rate in the common five-zone model. With the simple estimate of 220 minus your age, a 40-year-old's maximum is about 180 bpm, so zone 2 is about 108 to 126 bpm. In zone 2 you can talk in full sentences but not sing.

That is the short answer. The longer answer is that "zone 2" has no single official definition, formulas for maximum heart rate can be off by a wide margin, and the research on zone 2 training is more mixed than its popularity suggests. This guide covers all three.

What is zone 2 heart rate?

Zone 2 is the second of five heart rate training zones, usually defined as 60 to 70% of maximum heart rate. Garmin describes it as a comfortable pace with deeper breathing where you can still hold a conversation. A 2025 review in Sports Medicine defines zone 2 in lab terms as low-intensity exercise below the lactate threshold.

The five-zone model used by many watches:

Zone	% of maximum heart rate	How it feels
1	50–60%	Very easy, relaxed, steady breathing
2	60–70%	Comfortable, deeper breathing, conversation possible
3	70–80%	Moderate, conversation becomes harder
4	80–90%	Fast, somewhat uncomfortable, forceful breathing
5	90–100%	Sprint effort, not sustainable for long

Caption: Garmin Enduro 2 Owner's Manual, heart rate zone calculations.

Zone 2 sits inside what the American Heart Association calls moderate intensity, about 50 to 70% of maximum heart rate. Vigorous intensity is about 70 to 85%.

How do you calculate your zone 2 heart rate?

To calculate zone 2, estimate your maximum heart rate, then multiply it by 0.60 and 0.70. The American Heart Association uses 220 minus age. Tanaka and colleagues (2001), using data from 18,712 people, proposed 208 minus 0.7 times age, which gives higher values for older adults. Both are population averages.

Zone 2 by age with both formulas:

Age	Max HR (220 − age)	Zone 2 (220 − age)	Max HR (208 − 0.7 × age)	Zone 2 (Tanaka)
20	200	120–140 bpm	194	116–136 bpm
30	190	114–133 bpm	187	112–131 bpm
40	180	108–126 bpm	180	108–126 bpm
50	170	102–119 bpm	173	104–121 bpm
60	160	96–112 bpm	166	100–116 bpm
70	150	90–105 bpm	159	95–111 bpm

Caption: zone 2 = 60–70% of estimated maximum heart rate. Formulas from the American Heart Association and Tanaka H et al., J Am Coll Cardiol 2001. Values rounded.

Tanaka's study found that the 220 minus age formula underestimates maximum heart rate in older adults. They also found that the relationship between age and maximum heart rate was not different between men and women, and not influenced by habitual activity level.

How accurate are age formulas?

Age formulas describe groups, not individuals. Two people of the same age can have maximum heart rates far apart, so a formula-based zone 2 can be too low or too high for you. A measured maximum from a supervised test, or the highest reliable reading from a hard race effort, gives a better anchor. If you have a heart condition or take medication that affects heart rate, ask your doctor before testing a maximum.

How do you check zone 2 without a heart rate monitor?

Use the talk test. In zone 2 you can speak in full sentences, but you could not sing. The CDC uses the same test for moderate intensity: you can talk but not sing. If you can say only a few words before pausing for breath, you are in vigorous territory, above zone 2.

Check	In zone 2	Above zone 2
Talk test	Full sentences, can not sing	Only a few words per breath
Effort on a 0–10 scale	Moderate, around 5 to 6	7 or more
Breathing	Deeper but controlled	Hard, fast

Caption: CDC, How to Measure Physical Activity Intensity.

The talk test is useful because it adjusts for the day. On a hot day or after a short night, your heart rate runs higher at the same pace, and the talk test reflects how hard the effort actually is.

How do Apple Watch heart rate zones work?

Apple Watch shows five heart rate zones during workouts, calculated as a percentage of your maximum heart rate and personalized from your health data. Apple says the zones are only calculated if your date of birth is in the Health app. You can switch to manual zones and set the limits of zones 2, 3 and 4 yourself.

To set zone 2 manually on Apple Watch, open Settings, then Workout, then Heart Rate Zones, tap Manual, and enter the lower and upper limits for zone 2. You can also do this in the Watch app on iPhone under My Watch, Workout, Heart Rate Zones. Use your measured maximum, if you have one, to set a range from the table above.

What does research say about zone 2 training?

Research supports a lot of easy aerobic work for endurance athletes, but not zone 2 as the single best intensity for everyone. Seiler (2010) found that elite endurance athletes do about 80% of sessions at low intensity and about 20% at high intensity. A 2025 review by Storoschuk and colleagues concluded that current evidence does not support zone 2 as the optimal intensity for the general public.

Claim you may hear	What the evidence says
Elite endurance athletes train mostly easy	Yes. About 80% of sessions at low intensity in descriptive studies (Seiler 2010)
Zone 2 is the best intensity for mitochondria and fat burning	Not supported for the general public (Storoschuk et al. 2025)
Higher intensity matters for health	The 2025 review says higher intensities are important for cardiometabolic benefits, especially with limited training time
Any aerobic activity counts toward health guidelines	Yes. 150–300 min moderate or 75–150 min vigorous a week (US HHS 2018)

Caption: sources as listed in each row.

The practical takeaway: zone 2 is a comfortable, sustainable way to build weekly volume and meet activity guidelines. If you have limited time, adding some harder work tends to produce larger gains in fitness. Our guide on how to improve VO2 max covers interval training, and VO2 max by age shows where your fitness stands.

Why is my heart rate too high in zone 2?

If your heart rate jumps above zone 2 at an easy pace, common reasons include low aerobic fitness, a maximum heart rate estimate that is too low for you, heat, dehydration, caffeine, poor sleep or the start of an illness. Hills and wind also raise effort at the same pace.

Things to try:

1. Slow down or walk the hills. Zone 2 is about effort, not pace.
2. Check your maximum. If the formula underestimates your maximum, your zone 2 range will feel too low.
3. Look at recovery. A high resting heart rate and low HRV in the morning are often associated with a higher heart rate during exercise. See our recovery score guide.
4. Give it weeks. The pace you can hold at the same heart rate tends to improve with consistent aerobic training.

If your heart rate is unusually high at rest, or you feel chest pain, dizziness or palpitations during exercise, stop and see a doctor.

How Svanu counts your easy sessions

Svanu reads your workouts and heart rate from Apple Health. Its strain score (0 to 100) uses active energy, an intensity-weighted workout load and steps, so a long zone 2 session counts, and a hard interval session counts more per minute. Each day gets a target strain band based on today's recovery and your own strain history.

Training load then compares your 7-day and 42-day exponentially weighted load, so you can see whether a block of easy volume is a steady build or a jump. To understand how daily strain works, read what is strain. The core app is free. See more on the Svanu home page.