Abnormal heart rate during exercise?

AHusky1

I noticed that my heart rate goes up a good bit at the start of my workout but descends the longer I go. I'm on a treadmill at a set speed. I walked at 3.3 mph for nearly the entire session. (I only lowered the speed in the last minute as part of my cool down)

Is this normal? Should I be concerned?

Some background, if it matters. I played basketball all the time in high school and college (4-6 nights per week), but I haven't actually gone on a run in years. I used to be in excellent shape and, well, I've gone a bit round. I'm 6'3" and 220, so I'm overweight but weigh the same as I did in college.

lorrpb

You found be starting off a little hard. Tray starting at a slower pace and gradually ramping up over 5-10 min.

Azdak

If you are walking at the same speed and elevation, your heart rate graph should not look like that. Is this from a wrist sensor or a chest strap?

If the workload is constant, then the first place to look your heart rate sensing equipment.

An older example: with the Polar chest straps, if the battery was dying, or if you did not clean the strap, or if you did not wet the strap before you put it on, you would get erratic readings like your graph.

Most people are wearing wrist sensors these days, but if you have an optical sensor on your wrist wearable, the fit might not be right, it may be a malfunction, or something else may be messing with the signal.

Quite frankly, even if you had something more serious like an irregular heart rate, the graph would not look like that.

One thing you can do to troubleshoot—if you see the higher number on the sensor/watch, check your pulse manually and compare. At 3.3 mph you should be able to do it walking—otherwise you can slow down or even stop to take it. As long as you acquire the pulse within 5 sec after stopping and do a 10 sec count, you should get a count that is similar to when you were exercising. And it should be pretty easy to tell the difference between a heart rate of 155-165 and 115-120.