BEAT Points combine two metrics into one powerful number:
Sweat Points + Recovery Points = BEAT Points
• Sweat Points measure how hard your heart is working in the moment. The harder you push, the more Sweat Points you earn.
• Recovery Points measure how quickly your heart rate drops after intense exercise. As you get fitter, your heart recovers faster.
This score captures both sides of your fitness—the effort you put in and how your body adapts. By combining effort and recovery into one number, BEAT Points show you not just how hard you’re training, but exactly how that training is paying off. Together, they give you the complete picture of your fitness.
A "low" score is not a failed workout — it just reflects a different training stimulus or a different day for your body.
Long-term trends (in similar workouts) are what matter:
💡 Pro Tip: Look at both numbers, not just the total. High Sweat Points show you gave it your all today. High Recovery Points show your training is paying off over time. The best workouts? Strong on both.
Sweat Points measure how hard your heart is working during a workout based on the time you spend in each heart-rate zone, and turn that into a simple, comparable number. Calculated from your personal max heart rate, they reflect the effort you put into your workout, offering a consistent way to understand intensity across workouts.
Forget calories. Forget raw heart rate. Sweat Points reward your effort, not your fitness level.
Raw heart rate can be misleading—160 bpm can feel like a moderate push for one person but a max-effort sprint for another. Similarly, calorie counts are often broad estimates based on body size rather than the actual internal work you are doing.
Sweat Points calculate effort based on your unique maximum heart rate. This personalizes your data to your specific physiology, ensuring your score is always a true reflection of your intensity. Whether you are 25 or 50, you get an accurate, meaningful way to track your personal progress and ensure you're training at the right level for your body.
You earn points for every full minute spent in each heart rate (HR) zone:
• DARK RED zone (91–100% of max HR) -> 4 points
• LIGHT RED zone (81–90 of max HR) -> 3 points
• DARK BLUE zone (71–80% of max HR) -> 2 points
• LIGHT BLUE zone (≤70% of max HR) -> 1 point
The higher the zone, the more Sweat Points you earn. This turns your effort profile into a number that’s easy to compare across days, formats, and phases of training.
For example:
• High Sweat Points → Sustained time in high-intensity zones (e.g., in BURN or HYBRID).
• Moderate Sweat Points → Controlled, steady intensity (great for building base fitness or strength-focused days).
• Lower Sweat Points → Intentional recovery, technical focus days, or days where fatigue limits how high your HR climbs.
Sweat Points tell you about effort, not fitness — so interpret them with that nuance, always considering the same workout type:
• Stable or rising Sweat Points -> You’re able to consistently work at high relative intensity.
• Lower despite trying to push -> Can indicate under-recovery, stress, illness, poor sleep — or that you’ve raised your fitness baseline and need more power/speed to hit higher zones.
• Stay moderate while workouts feel easier: A sign your aerobic conditioning is improving — your body has become more efficient at the same workload.
💡 Pro Tip: Don't just chase the red zone. Good training means moving between zones, particularly with different workout formats. Your body gets stronger through alternating effort and recovery — not constant max effort.
Recovery Points measure how quickly your heart calms down after going all-out. This is one of the most reliable indicators of cardiovascular health — and proof that your training is working.
Recovery Points measure heart rate recovery (HRR) — one of the clearest indicators of cardiovascular fitness. A faster recovery after effort often reflects stronger cardiovascular conditioning.
A well-trained heart is efficient. After intense effort, it doesn't need to keep racing — it recovers quickly.
Elite athletes might drop 40+ bpm in a single minute. If you're just starting out, 15–20 bpm is completely normal. The exciting part? This number improves with consistent training.
At the end of your workout:
A higher number = a faster drop = stronger recovery.
For example:
• High Recovery Points -> Your heart is recovering quickly — often a sign of good cardiovascular conditioning and/or that you arrived well-rested.
• Moderate Recovery Points -> Normal after a demanding workout, a big push near the end, or days when you’re not fully rested.
• Low Recovery Points -> Often influenced by fatigue, dehydration, stress, illness, or continuing to move during the recovery minute (e.g., walking around).
Not a verdict on your fitness — just feedback on today’s physiology.
Recovery Points are most valuable in long-term patterns:
• Trending up across similar workouts -> Strong sign that your cardiovascular fitness is improving.
• Holding steady while your workouts get harder -> Great sign — your recovery system is keeping up.
• Trending down persistently -> A signal to adjust training load, sleep, or stress.
This is how HRR is used in elite training environments — to balance effort with recovery.
💡 Pro Tip: This is THE metric to watch over months. Sweat Points can vary from workout to workout depending on how hard you push. But steadily climbing Recovery Points? That's undeniable progress — your heart is literally getting stronger.
• <18 -> Low recovery. Building up your base - keep showing up to see improvements.
• 18-29 -> Moderate recovery. Solid fitness foundation.
• 30-40 -> High recovery. Strong cardiovascular conditioning.
• >40 -> Excellent recovery. Athlete-level fitness.
At BEAT81 we calculate two types of calorie burn:
We use two standard formulas here:
We use the Keytel formula to calculate your Gross Calorie Burn, meaning calories burned during exercise. We then use the Harris-Benedict formula to calculate your Basal Metabolic Rate: how many calories you would have burned resting. Finally, subtracting your “resting” calories from the gross calories you burned during the workout gives us the calories you burned during your BEAT81 workout.
Keytel Formula used to calculate Gross Calorie Burn:
Harris-Benedict formula used to calculate Basal Metabolic Rate (calories burned per 24 hours):
Calculating the Resting Metabolic Rate calorie burn for the workout duration:
Calculating calorie burn during a workout:
When you exercise close to your maximum heart rate your body requires additional O2 after the workout to recover - this is called excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC). Your EPOC is bigger the more minutes you train close to your maximum heart rate. Therefore, the longer you train above 80% the more calories you burn via EPOC after the class.
How we calculate post workout calories:
The total calories you burn thanks to a workout is the sum of workout calories and EPOC calories.
Your spinning bike works with resistance to simulate riding a bike on a flat road, uphill or downhill.
The knob (or dial) in the center can be turned to the right to increase resistance or to the left to decrease resistance. Turn it halfway to feel a difference. You can also always press the knob down to stop your bike completely.
When you get on your bike the resistance is set to 0 (or “downhill”) - which we will never use at a BEAT81 workout. Therefore always turn the knob to the right until you feel some resistance. You are now on the flat road.
Now it gets interesting: above the knob there is a lever (or SprintShifter), which allows you to significantly increase resistance to simulate hills (or a mountain). The default setting is on the left (or “1”). By moving the lever to the middle (or “2”) you increase the resistance by 70%. Moving the lever to the right (or “3”) increases resistance by 100%.
During the ride our coaches will instruct you when to increase or decrease resistance using the “dial” or the “shifter”.
