I've never used an HR monitor or paid any attention to HR when doing A+A. [And by A+A, I mean what I think of as "classic" A+A, inspired by Al Ciampa (heavy sets of 5, generous rest, longer session duration), not the "Kettlebells StrongFirst" style where you go by a relatively short interval until you hit a stop sign via the talk test] .
Whether I go by feel or with a fixed interval by the clock, my concerns are:
--Am I resting enough to maintain full power on each set for my intended number of repeats?
--Am I resting enough so the overall level of effort for the session is easy to moderate?
--Am I recovering well enough from session to session and week to week?
Along the way, I might have ups and downs, good days and bad days, and spend a lot of time on plateaus where it may seem like not much is happening. I just focus on the process -- punch the clock and put in the time and reps. Let the accumulated time and volume do the work.
I don't worry about being in any "zone." My focus is not to stay in a particular heartrate range, but to do a high volume of high-power work. The aerobic part is the recovery that gets you ready for the next repeat, not the work that elevates your heartrate.
I want to be able to use the heaviest weight I can snatch or double clean aggressively (I'm not big on swings), make every set powerful, and keep going for a lot of repeats. Even though each set is full power, I want the overall effort to be relaxed and let the accumulated time and volume do the work. I think of it as practice recovering between repeats as much as practice doing the reps, and I want all the reps to be fresh reps, not tired reps.
If I am going by the clock, I set a
very generous rest interval that seems way too long at the beginning of a session, so it will still be reasonably generous at the end of a long session. In practice, my typical interval for sets of 5 snatches or double cleans is 2 minutes. I've gone as low as 1:20 at times in the past, but that's more of a slog and getting a bit away from the relaxed feel I want with A+A. If I can go that fast and recover sufficiently, I feel like I'm using too light a weight.
I just keep pounding the rock. "Pound the rock" is a motto adopted by Gregg Popovich, the legendary coach of the NBA's San Antonio Spurs, based on the "Stonecutter's Credo":
When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before. — Jacob Riis
I just keep pounding the rock and over time the biggest measures of improvement are my level of effort to do the same work, and then being able to move up in bell size. Compressing session length or rest intervals may occur to an extent, but IMO shouldn't be a focus.
