By knowing how your heart rate responds to the stress you are putting on your body, you can easily assess :
- How fit you are
- How hard you should be working to gain the maximum benefit from the minimum amount of effort and time
- Whether you are over-training
- If you are just starting an illness which means you should ease off, before you even feel any symptoms!
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So what is a heart rate monitor?
A heart rate monitor is an accurate method of finding out what your actual heart rate is in real time. Most of them have two components:
- A chest strap - which has sensors in it that detect the electrical signals operating the heart, and transmit the pulse rate data to a receiver unit.
- A receiver unit - usually a stopwatch which is worn on the wrist, giving a real-time readout of your actual heart rate.
These days heart rate monitors are getting more and more sophisticated - when I got my first one over 10 years ago it was relatively simple. A watch, a stopwatch and a readout of heart rate, with audible alarms which you could set to go off if your heart rate was too high (or too low!). Now you can get versions that can download all your heart rate data from each workout to your PC, and analyse them to your heart’s content! You can even get versions with integrated GPS, which can do all the same things plus measuring how far you’ve travelled and even give you directions home if you get lost. A true gadget fan’s dream!
What use is the data from a heart rate monitor for getting fit?
If you want to get fit in the minimum possible time, monitoring your heart rate can be a great help. It can tell you:
- How hard you are working compared with your target. Many training regimes call for different heart rate target zones on different days. The problems is, as you get fitter your workouts become imperceptibly easier every time you do them. So after a couple of weeks you may feel like you are working at the same rate that you were. You may be faster than before. However, you may not be pushing hard enough to gain the maximum benefit.
- Whether you are working too hard. Beginners often make the mistake of trying too hard when they first start exercising. After all, more is more, isn’t it? Well no. It’s much better to start off at a lower level, and build up than to try too hard on day one and end up injured. Even if you are an experienced exerciser, some days you may do your normal workout and find that your heart rate is higher than usual. This is an early indication that you are either just succumbing to an illness which you haven’t yet had any symptoms for, or that you are overtraining. Either way, you need to ease off for a few days before you go too far.
- How fit you are. Heart rate is a good measure of how fit you are. The conventional measure is resting heart rate - and the lower the better. But you don’t need a heart rate monitor to measure it - just hands and a watch! You can get a more detailed insight by observing how fast your heart rate returns to normal after an exertion. Recovery time is a very good indicator of fitness. The faster your heart rate returns to normal after a fixed level of exertion, the fitter you are.
How to use a heart rate monitor
There are lots of different ways of using a heart rate monitor, with varying degrees of complication. What they all agree on is that you use your maximum heart rate to estimate what target heart rate to use for a particular workout. What they don’t agree on is just about everything else!
So what are the options?
The simplest solution (and a good starting point for beginners) is:
- Estimate your maximum heart rate from the formula: 220 minus your age
- Work out your target heart rate for the exercise session based on a % of this number
- 60% of MHR is the ‘easy’ exercise zone - exercising at this level is enough to improve aerobic fitness, and is not too demanding for beginners
- 70% of MHR is the ‘moderate’ exercise zone - used by regular exercisers to improve their cardiovascular performance.
- 80% - 90% of MHR is the ‘high intensity’ zone. This is only used by people who are already very fit, and even then only for short periods to improve high end performance and endurance. NOT for beginners!
There are other options, like the Karvonen method (which defines the target zone percentages based on the range between your resting pulse and your maximum) and the Conconi method (which tries to define the target zones relative to your own lactate threshold), but these are getting a bit complicated for all but the most ardent enthusiast.
How do I start to use a heart rate monitor to get fit?
First, buy heart rate monitor, if you don’t already have one. Don’t worry if you can’t afford an expensive one - you can get a good basic model from around $30 in the US or £20 in the UK. I have used a basic Polar model for 10 years, and it has all the features you need (and has been totally reliable). You should only pay for a more advanced model if you want more toys on it! To find out more about what Heart Rate Monitors are available, please click here.
Then I’d suggest buying a guide to getting fit which includes more detailed information about how to get fit using a Heart Rate Monitor. I have written an eBook which contains all the information you need to get fit, with or without a heart rate monitor, which you can find out about here.
Alternatively there are zillions of other guides available.
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