Monitoring your heart rate?????

simply_bubbz

I'm still on my learning curve about all this fitness stuff so this may sound like a dumb question but why is it so important to reach your target heart rate? Is that the rate you should be at to get the most out your workout? The higher your heart rate the more cals you burn right?

mwyvr

Many would argue it isn't that important to worry about target heart rate.

Runners can benefit from HR monitoring for long run training. They aren't worried about calorie burn but maintaining an even level of exertion, well within their aerobic capacity, to further build endurance. Such folks purposely are avoiding anywhere near their max HR.

Best advice is that you should avoid or delay buying a HR monitor until or unless you know exactly what it is for and how it would benefit your training.

Burning more calories is largely a factor of working out longer.

DavPul

I'm going with ^this

Ohhim

When starting out on the fitness path as a very overweight guy, I had a hard time figuring out how hard I was supposed to be working when I was at the gym. Seeing folks going at twice my speed on a treadmill/bike was a bit frustrating.

As a result, I ended up starting to use heart rate as a gauge for effort, and it validated that I was working as hard as I was supposed to. Early on, for my longer (1+ hour) cardio sessions, I ended up settling on targeting about 70-80% of my max HR, which gave me a good burn, but didn't wipe me out. In my case, my max HR was about 190 (figured it out via some hill repeats), so I did most of my workouts at 130-150 BPM and usually came away feeling tired but fresh enough to want to come back the next day.

I definitely use HR now as a way to monitor intensity during my runs & bike rides and even use some running & triathlon training plans that have me work in various heart rate zones for specific periods of time. I also actively check heart rate during marathons/half marathons to make sure I'm not over or under pacing the run.

MeanderingMammal

simply_bubbz wrote: »

why is it so important to reach your target heart rate?

It depends on your objectives. I'm in the camp of don't worry about it unless you have a clear performance objective. If your interest is in calorie expenditure, use a stopwatch and push yourself longer.

professionalHobbyist

simply_bubbz wrote: »

I'm still on my learning curve about all this fitness stuff so this may sound like a dumb question but why is it so important to reach your target heart rate? Is that the rate you should be at to get the most out your workout? The higher your heart rate the more cals you burn right?

There are a few things to consider

Higher cardio rate is a bit of heart conditioning and not just calorie burning.

Lower intensity is mainly calorie burning

Blasts of intensity like HIIT help condition your heart and can lower your resting heart rate.

I have a HRM. I do go to the zones as my trainer advised. I like to do HIIT and need to get to 92% or higher on the intense intervals.

It gets down to what helps you own your workout, own your fitness.... What keeps you in the game. I like monitoring my body and tread it like a chemistry set. The whole food macro nutrition and heart rate zones. I look at bike rides for faster and slower mile stretches and all that stuff.

It keeps it interesting to me. And that is just me. Some people could give a toss less and don't want any of that stuff.

Do what you need to do you can hit your goals. There is no silly piece of gear if it enables you to succeed!!

ScubaSteve1962

Yes if you want to burn more calories you need to work hard at cardio, working harder would mean a higher heart rate. It also helped my heart conditioning, and got me off blood pressure medicine. For me a HRM gave me more information, more motivation, didn't need a certain goal other than to be in better shape. Found out I really wasn't pushing myself to get there. There are some very inexpensive monitors out there that you don't have to break the bank to get. If you have a smart phone here's a sensor less than $60 that you can use, and will also give your heart rate on most cardio equipment. If you have zone you want to stay it, it will control the level/resistance/incline to help get you there and keep you there. Also if you chose to add an activity monitor later it will work with most that use bluetooth.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FZX9CW4/ref=twister_B00NOHWTO6

KateSm33

@simply_bubbz it could be extremely helpful to know your heart rate zone during sport activity as it allows you burn more fat and so on, for example take a look how great is swimming in your heart rate zone to achieve your fitness goal: Increased metabolism, ‘Feel good’ hormones production, Improved heart health read more at http://www.swimmo.com/blog/no-category/heart-rate-monitoring-swimmers/

Docbanana2002

Don't worry about keeping your heart rate in that so called "fat burning zone"....a bit of bro science has developed around that and you should ignore most of it! As you work harder, you burn more calories, in general and from fat. The *percentage* from fat will decrease, but a slightly smaller percent of a much higher number still ends up to being more fat burned the harder you go.

Here is how I use a HRM...
...for steady state cardio it is the best way to measure calorie burns...much better than he MFP database to the machine at the gym
...to help me gauge workout intensity and adjust my workout accordingly. The goal being to work as hard as I have a goal to work at that session. A recovery run is going to be different than a high intensity interval session. The old fashioned low tech way is to just listen to your body, pay attention to breathing, how you feel, etc. and tweak as needed. But someone new to fitness might find this hard because they don't know how to make sense of the physical sensations and can push themselves too hard by ignoring important cues....or fail to benefit much because they back off as soon as they feel anything. I've most often seen new runners push too hard and hold back their progress or give up because they think they should be able to sprint for miles right out of the gate LOL. They show up here wondering why they get dizzy and chest pains and exhausted while running... The answer is usually that they are running their heart up WAY too high and they need to regulate their speed more, save something for the remainder of the run. It is a skill you have to develop and the data can help. I'm not a novice and am pretty good at predicting my HR from sensation, but I still like to have an additional source of data.
...to monitor progress. A run that once would max out my HR and be a hard run will now run me around 130-140 and be an easy pace. Cool to watch it drop! I'm a data geek.

simply_bubbz

Docbanana2002 wrote: »

Don't worry about keeping your heart rate in that so called "fat burning zone"....a bit of bro science has developed around that and you should ignore most of it! As you work harder, you burn more calories, in general and from fat. The *percentage* from fat will decrease, but a slightly smaller percent of a much higher number still ends up to being more fat burned the harder you go.

Here is how I use a HRM...
...for steady state cardio it is the best way to measure calorie burns...much better than he MFP database to the machine at the gym
...to help me gauge workout intensity and adjust my workout accordingly. The goal being to work as hard as I have a goal to work at that session. A recovery run is going to be different than a high intensity interval session. The old fashioned low tech way is to just listen to your body, pay attention to breathing, how you feel, etc. and tweak as needed. But someone new to fitness might find this hard because they don't know how to make sense of the physical sensations and can push themselves too hard by ignoring important cues....or fail to benefit much because they back off as soon as they feel anything. I've most often seen new runners push too hard and hold back their progress or give up because they think they should be able to sprint for miles right out of the gate LOL. They show up here wondering why they get dizzy and chest pains and exhausted while running... The answer is usually that they are running their heart up WAY too high and they need to regulate their speed more, save something for the remainder of the run. It is a skill you have to develop and the data can help. I'm not a novice and am pretty good at predicting my HR from sensation, but I still like to have an additional source of data.
...to monitor progress. A run that once would max out my HR and be a hard run will now run me around 130-140 and be an easy pace. Cool to watch it drop! I'm a data geek.

so the machines at the gym isn't accurate either??? They measure your heart rate so I figured they were pretty accurate..

ScubaSteve1962

simply_bubbz wrote: »

Docbanana2002 wrote: »

Don't worry about keeping your heart rate in that so called "fat burning zone"....a bit of bro science has developed around that and you should ignore most of it! As you work harder, you burn more calories, in general and from fat. The *percentage* from fat will decrease, but a slightly smaller percent of a much higher number still ends up to being more fat burned the harder you go.

Here is how I use a HRM...
...for steady state cardio it is the best way to measure calorie burns...much better than he MFP database to the machine at the gym
...to help me gauge workout intensity and adjust my workout accordingly. The goal being to work as hard as I have a goal to work at that session. A recovery run is going to be different than a high intensity interval session. The old fashioned low tech way is to just listen to your body, pay attention to breathing, how you feel, etc. and tweak as needed. But someone new to fitness might find this hard because they don't know how to make sense of the physical sensations and can push themselves too hard by ignoring important cues....or fail to benefit much because they back off as soon as they feel anything. I've most often seen new runners push too hard and hold back their progress or give up because they think they should be able to sprint for miles right out of the gate LOL. They show up here wondering why they get dizzy and chest pains and exhausted while running... The answer is usually that they are running their heart up WAY too high and they need to regulate their speed more, save something for the remainder of the run. It is a skill you have to develop and the data can help. I'm not a novice and am pretty good at predicting my HR from sensation, but I still like to have an additional source of data.
...to monitor progress. A run that once would max out my HR and be a hard run will now run me around 130-140 and be an easy pace. Cool to watch it drop! I'm a data geek.

so the machines at the gym isn't accurate either??? They measure your heart rate so I figured they were pretty accurate..

For heart rate, depends on how well the sensors are working. As far as calories, there's always a 200+ calorie difference between them and my HRM, and they're both getting my heart rate for the same source.