TAKE YOUR WORKOUTS TO THE NEXT LEVEL WITH A HEART RATE MONITOR

How often your heart beats is a great measure of fitness and it needs to be accurately measured if you want to see your fitness improve.  The areas you really want to measure and improve in are your heart rate at rest and the speed with which it recovers from sustained activity.  A well conditioned ticker can pump less to get your body the O2 that it needs. Two of the best fitness measurements are the speed of recovery from effort and your resting pulse.

More exercise translates to a stronger pump. There are two types of workouts: aerobic and anaerobic. Aerobic training is what is required to improve your fitness because you are using many muscle groups for a long period of time at a steady pace. An anaerobic workout consists of small groups of your body’s muscles being used over a short period of time at a high level of exertion.

In either type of workout your muscles will demand oxygen. The harder you workout the more oxygen your muscles require. The heart pumps faster during a workout in an effort to deliver the additional oxygen that your muscles demand.

Measuring your heart rate using a heart rate monitor watch is the best way to gauge the effectiveness of your workout. Having good accurate measurements of your body’s engine is critical to getting the most out of your exercise. 

A heart rate monitor watch provides you with several key pieces of data you must have to improve.

Resting heart rate

Resting beats per minute equals the number of heart beats achieved in one minute of inactivity. A quiet period of inactivity or meditation at any point during the day will achieve a similar effect.

Measure this when you have been at rest and are feeling no outside stresses. Guys will be around 60 to 80 beats, however it is quite normal to see serious athletes with a resting pulse rate in the 40′s. A highly trained athlete can have beats per minute in the 40′s at rest. We are after gradually measuring improvement and resting heart rate can tell you whether to go easy or hard on a given day depending upon your recovery.

Peak or max heart rate

The maximum is an important number, but not to measure, as it represents the maximum amount of time in a minute your heart can beat. The maximum heart rate should not be attempted but rather calculated using the following formula. the fitness community has developed a baseline formula to measure your maximum heart rate.

Subtract your age from the number 220. So, a 50 year old would have a maximum heart rate of 170. While this formula is not perfectly precise it beats running the risks of hurting yourself because actually achieving your maximum heart rate can be dangerous.

Zone range heart rate

Your training heart rate is the range of heart rate that you maintain during aerobic workouts in an effort to improve fitness. A heart rate monitor watch with beeper alarms is really good for this because it alerts you when you have gone outside your zone range of 50% to 80% of max heart rate. The bands of this range can be limited further to meet the specific needs of each individual for where they are within their exercise program – from begginer to professional.

If you are just getting started with your exercise program that 50% to 60% of your max heart rate is fine to start building a base. As your fitness improves try to stay between 60% and 70% and top caliber athletes can even consider 70% to 80% of max heart rate. I call it the electronic whip because it crack the whip if you are slacking and tells you to back off if you are going too hard but it is an extremely effective way to bracket your workouts so you achieve maximum benefit.

Exceptionally fit athletes will operate at 70 to 80 percent for long periods of time but if you aren’t Lance Armstrong yet than stick to the lower ranges. Years of time are needed to build the type of base that it takes to operate at this level of output and those who work out at this level already likely have low resting heart rates and quick recovery times.

Recovery heart rate

How quickly does your heart rate drop when you have completed a prolonged period of exercise? This best explains the concept of recovery heart rate. Use your heart rate monitor watch to measure your heart rate before beginning your workout. When you have been working out for 20 minutes or longer stop and see how fast you can recover to 20 beats per minute greater than your pre-workout heart rate.

What you will notice is that as your fitness improves your heart will recover more quickly from a sustained effort. A lot of times if you are not recovering well you may need a rest day. If your heart rate was 70 beats per minute before your workout than take several breaks and see how long it takes to recover to 90 beats per minute. Once you recover to 90 then resume your workout and repeat this process several times.

How heart rate watches help

Using a heart rate monitor is very simple. Heart rate monitor watches come in dozens of shapes, sizes and features. Just like an electrocardiogram (ECG) the transmitter detects electrical activity. This activity is relayed by a cord connected to a wristwatch with a graphic display.

For heart rate monitor watches that require no strap and allow you to measure your heart rate via sensors checkout Mio and Pro-Form. These watches will measure your pre-exercise pulse and give you recovery measurements but they won’t give you the continuous feedback throughout the workout when you are on the fly

The choices of heart rate watches are much broader than they were 5 years ago. You can go real basic and just get a continuous display of your pulse. Other models include GPS devices and even alarms that chime if you go outside your pre-set range.

Some gather distance data, like GPS models, while others count calories expended.  Many heart rate monitor watches also allow you to download your workout heart rates from the watch to a computer so you can visually see your rate of improvement over time.

Heartratewatchcompany.com offers products on Heart Rate Monitor Watch, Heart Rate Monitor, Bike Computer, GPS Heart Rate Watch and Strapless Heart Rate Monitor Watch.

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