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Should I stay in one heart-rate zone while doing cardio?

Staying in one heart-rate zone while you perform cardiovascular exercises (also called steady-state cardio) is fine for maintaining general health and fitness. However, if your goal is to lose body fat or to improve sports performance, it won’t help you to achieve results as quickly as interval training.

Research shows that even if you combine steady-state cardio with a good nutrition plan, it doesn’t really improve the rate at which your body burns fat. If you’re an athlete looking to improve your performance in either speed or endurance, steady-state cardio is not going to be much help because it does not simulate game conditions, which are rarely steady-state (unless it’s a marathon).

When I take my heart rate, it’s not for the purpose of training. Rather, it’s for measuring recovery between sets of interval training. For example, I will start my next set of intervals when my heart rate has dropped by 40 beats per minute since the previous set ended.