Is this an improvement on my endurance?

jacki865

Im 24 and I have been working out regulary since the year began. I have been starting to do the interval program on the elliptical and I noticed that when I do the hard part my heart rate will go up about 170ish and when I do the moderate part my heart rate will drop down to 140ish immediately. When I hold onto the monitor on the machine I can see the heart rate increase and decrease as the machine cycles from hard to moderate. When I used to do intervals my heart rate would stay at a constant 170ish throughout the entire workout. Does this mean my endurance is improving if my recovery time is lessoning?

BrianSharpe

It means that your cardiovascular fitness is improving which is a positive thing. Your overall endurance tends to improve at a slightly slower rate as it involves a whole series of adaptations (of which cardiovascular is one)

One of the reasons I bought a heart rate monitor years ago was to track changes in heart rate over time and to check resting heart rate and recovery times, all important metrics.