How to find your Heart Rate and what it means for your Workout

Target heart rate, (and also resting heart rate) are terms that conjure up images of elite athletes using high tech methods to become the best in their sport. While athletes do often monitor their heart rates for training purposes, there is nothing high tech or complicated about using this concept to improve your workouts and to get more out of what you put in.

Exercising within your target heart rate zone helps to ensure that you are burning fat and helps you understand and listen to your body’s physical cues. Understanding your target heart rate can be a very important tool for those who have led a sedentary lifestyles and are not aware of what their body’s safe limits are.

There are two extremes that your heart rate can operate between (go past these extremes and you are dead). Your resting heart rate is how many beats per minute occur when your body is asleep. This can be a tricky thing to obtain. The most common way to get this is to have a stop watch next to you, and when you wake up naturally, time your heart rate for one minute, trying to move as little as possible in order to keep your body in physical sleep mode. Put your finger under your neck and count how many beats happen in one minute. A resting heart rate of 60 to 80 beats per minute is average. Anything over 100 means you are overtraining (it could also mean that you have woken up too much and have raised your heart rate). Some athletes can get their resting heart rates down below 40 beats, this means that their hearts are super efficient at bumping blood.

The other extreme is your maximum heart rate. This is how high your heart rate can go, most people will collapse from exhaustion if they go over this rate, it is possible to even die. For a 20 year old, the max is 200 beats per minutes, for 30 it is 190 beats and for 40 it is 180, etc. So this brings us to a target heart rate zone. This rate is where your heart is working at 50% to 85% of its limit. So for a 30 year old it would be between 95-162 beats per minute.

Here is formula for calculating your target heart rate more accurately. Subtract your age from 220, this is your approximate maximum heart rate. Now take this number and subtract your resting heart rate. This will give you your heart rate reserve. Take 60% of this number and add your resting heart rate to get the lower limit of your target HR, then take 85% of your HHR (heart rate reserve) and add your resting heart rate to get the upper limit of your target HR.

Example: 37 year old with a resting heart rate of 70.

220-37 years = 183 MHR
183 MHR-70 RHR = 113 HRR
113 x 60%+70 = 138 113×85%+70 = 166

So the Target Heart Range zone for this person would be 138 to 166 beats per minute.

As you do cardio, take your heart rate for one minute with your fingers against your neck and you will start to get an idea of how hard your heart is working. Your heart rate needs to be within your target heart rate zone in order for your exercise to be considered cardio exercise, (remember, cardio means you are working the heart muscle). There are heart rate monitors that you can wear that will show your heart rate throughout your workout. Another option would be to try one of the cardio machines at the gym that has a built in heart rate monitor.