Monday, 23 February 2009

• Using A Heart Rate Monitor To Gauge Fitness and Calorie Burn

  
  

  
  

  
  I recently purchased a heart rate monitor, a simple polar one. I don’t do any fancy exercise, I just wanted to use it for guidance.
  
  Other heart rate monitors are extremely sophisticated and are capable of doing more than what the average person needs.
  

  The point of a heart rate monitor is to monitor your heart rate while performing cardio activity, or if you have a special one, for monitoring weight lifting activity.

  These can accurately determine how many calories you burn doing X activity as long as it is classified as cardio.

  Your heart rate is an important indicator of how fit you are as well. Your resting heart rate can give you a glimpse into your internal workings and health level.
  

  For example, an athlete will have a very low resting heart rate (which is good). Lance Armstrong’s RHR is 32! My resting heart rate is between 60 and 65. An ideal heart rate for most people would be in the 50-78 range for health. 50 being great, and 78 being borderline dangerous.

  That being said, with your resting heart rate in hand you can use a formula to determine your target heart rate zones. These zones will allow you hit the exact intensity that you need for fitness. If someone was aiming for anaerobic exercise, they would know what percentage they needed to reach. For someone doing aerobic, they could accurately tell how hard they are working and what they are burning, or if they need to cool down or up the intensity.

  One of my favorite things to do with my heart rate monitor, is to see how fast I recover. Recovery rates are important as well, because they let you know how out of shape you are or how fit you are. Using myself as an example, I can tell you that I can go from 170 BPM (anaerobic zone) to 130 (aerobic zone) in under 1 minute.
  

  That equals a decline of 40 BPM, which is pretty healthy. The faster you recover, the better off you are.

  Are heart rate monitors a good indicator of health? Do you know your heart rates? If not, have you thougth about buying a heart rate monitor?

  healthkicker.com
  

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