Friel's Heart-Rate Zones: 5, 7, and Why Every Platform Numbers Them Differently

Sven Ahrens12 June 2026Last updated 6 September 2026

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If your zones from one app don't match another, Joe Friel's heart-rate model is usually why. It is the most used heart-rate zone system in endurance sport, and the most relabelled. Here is why it is 5 zones or 7, and how intervals.icu relabels them.

What Friel's zones are

Friel's zones are anchored to your lactate-threshold heart rate (LTHR), the heart rate you can hold for roughly an hour of hard, steady effort. Every band is pinned to a marker you measure, not to 220 − age (off by ±10–12 bpm).

Friel publishes separate cycling and running boundaries, since running LTHR sits a few percent above cycling LTHR.

Five zones, or seven?

Both. The model is five zones, but Friel splits Zone 5 into 5a, 5b and 5c, so it is most often shown as seven. Zones 1–4 are identical in either view:

Z1 Recovery
Z2 Aerobic / endurance
Z3 Tempo
Z4 Threshold (94–99% LTHR cycling, 95–99% running)
Z5a just above threshold
Z5b VO₂max / aerobic capacity
Z5c anaerobic, short and sharp

Plug in your LTHR and toggle between the 5- and 7-zone views:

Lactate-threshold HR

165bpm

cycling LTHR

Zone	Range	What it trains
Z1	Active Recovery ≤ 132 bpm	Recovery spins; flushes the legs. RPE 1–2, very easy.
Z2	Endurance 133–147 bpm	Aerobic base and fat metabolism. RPE 3–4, all-day pace.
Z3	Tempo 148–153 bpm	Aerobic endurance, 'sweet' steady work. RPE 5–6, comfortably hard.
Z4	Threshold 154–163 bpm	Lactate threshold; sustainable hard. RPE 7–8, 20–60 min limit.
Z5a	VO₂max 164–168 bpm	Maximal aerobic power. RPE 9, 3–8 min efforts.
Z5b	Anaerobic Capacity 169–175 bpm	Anaerobic capacity, short and sharp. RPE 9–10, 30s–3min.
Z5c	Neuromuscular ≥ 176 bpm	Sprint power and neuromuscular drive. RPE 10, all-out.

Active Recovery

≤ 132 bpm

Endurance

133–147 bpm

Tempo

148–153 bpm

Threshold

154–163 bpm

Z5a

VO₂max

164–168 bpm

Z5b

Anaerobic Capacity

169–175 bpm

Z5c

Neuromuscular

≥ 176 bpm

Z1 · Active Recovery. Recovery spins; flushes the legs. RPE 1–2, very easy.

Z2 · Endurance. Aerobic base and fat metabolism. RPE 3–4, all-day pace.

Z3 · Tempo. Aerobic endurance, 'sweet' steady work. RPE 5–6, comfortably hard.

Z4 · Threshold. Lactate threshold; sustainable hard. RPE 7–8, 20–60 min limit.

Z5a · VO₂max. Maximal aerobic power. RPE 9, 3–8 min efforts.

Z5b · Anaerobic Capacity. Anaerobic capacity, short and sharp. RPE 9–10, 30s–3min.

Z5c · Neuromuscular. Sprint power and neuromuscular drive. RPE 10, all-out.

LTHR-based zones are more individual than %HRmax because they anchor to your actual threshold, not an age estimate. Cycling and running LTHR differ, so test each sport separately.
Field test: warm up, then ride or run a hard 30-minute solo time trial. Your LTHR is the average heart rate of the final 20 minutes (Friel's protocol).

A PDF of your personalized results, with a QR code to reopen them anytime.

Why every platform renumbers them

The boundaries are Friel's. The labels are not standardized.

intervals.icu uses the same Friel LTHR percentages but numbers the zones sequentially, Z1 to Z7. Friel's Z5a, Z5b and Z5c appear as Z5, Z6 and Z7.
TrainingPeaks, which Friel co-founded, keeps the original Z5a / Z5b / Z5c notation.

Same maths, different counting. If your zones "don't match", one tool split Zone 5 into a/b/c and the other counted to 7.

What the model gets right

It's individual. LTHR is your measured threshold, not a population average scaled by age.
It's measurable without a lab. A 30-minute time trial gives a usable number for free.
It's threshold-pinned. The zones stay sensible even as an age-based HRmax estimate drifts.
It's sport-specific. Separate cycling and running anchors stop you training one sport with the other's zones.

Where it falls short

Heart rate is blunt at the top end:

HR lags and drifts. It rises slowly at the start of an interval, climbs over a long effort (cardiac drift), and spikes in heat or dehydration.
It saturates above threshold. In Z5a–Z5c the heart-rate differences are tiny and arrive late. Power (cycling) or pace (running) controls those efforts far better. Friel himself moved toward power for the high zones.
It's a single-threshold model. It marks the upper threshold but not the lower aerobic threshold the way dual-threshold and polarized models do.
It's only as good as your test. A stale or badly paced LTHR test mis-sets every zone.

How to find your LTHR

The classic Friel field test:

Warm up 10–15 minutes easy with a couple of short pickups.
Time-trial for 30 minutes, solo, flat or on a trainer, hard and evenly paced.
Press lap at 10 minutes, so your monitor averages the final 20 minutes separately.
Your LTHR is the average heart rate of those last 20 minutes.

Test rested, separately for cycling and running. Re-test every 4–8 weeks of focused training. Then use the LTHR zone calculator, or compare against your max-heart-rate and %HRmax zones.