Resting Heart Rate Question-

goochinator

What is a 'good' resting heart rate? Is it a higher number ( 70) or a lower number (40)?

I was under the impression that a higher resting heart rate was good, becuase you were burning more calories just resting, but then I read somewhere that professional athletes have something like a 40 resting heart rate...

Can anyone shed some light?
Thanks!

goochinator

What is a 'good' resting heart rate? Is it a higher number ( 70) or a lower number (40)?

I was under the impression that a higher resting heart rate was good, becuase you were burning more calories just resting, but then I read somewhere that professional athletes have something like a 40 resting heart rate...

Can anyone shed some light?
Thanks!

yoginimary

A lower number means you are more fit. As far as burning more calories, I'm not sure. 40 is super low (Lance Armstrong), 70 is not bad, 90 would be unhealthy.

banks1850

The lower the resting heart rate, the better shape you are in. Lower resting heart rate means your body is more efficient at extracting oxygen out of the blood, It also means your heart is stronger and can pump more blood with each beat. 2 things to look at with regards to heart rate. 1 resting heart rate (talked about above), and 2 recovery time. The faster you can recover from vigorous physical activity, the better because this means your muscles are better at recovering their oxygen and energy supply.

A note to this, this is one of the main reasons to warm up and cool down when exercising, jumping from zero physical activity to high activity will cause the heart to rapidly increase activity, which can be dangerous (especially for people in their 40's and older), you should want your heart to "ramp" up over the course of several minutes.

MFS27

I think a normal resting HR is around 70 - the more fit you are, the lower your HR. Yes, you burn fewer calories as you get "fitter" because your body becomes more efficient - this is why super athletes are able to do the distances and speeds that they do - their bodies have adapted and are able to expend fewer calories doing more than the "average joe" who hasn't trained. This is also why a HRM is so helpful - you can literally SEE when you need to start pushing yourself harder to get into the upper HR zone in order to burn more calories.

Right now my resting HR is around 59 - so I have to run my butt off (or swim hard) in order to get up into the 135-150 HR range for exercise. Loving my polar!!!

cp005e

When I have been sedentary for a few hours (on the couch with the laptop and/or watching TV), I see my heart rate down in the 40s... usually it is around 58 after I've been relaxed for several minutes. But it jumps up pretty quickly. Walking at a moderate pace will put me up to 100 or 110, and I am generally in the 140s and 150s during my workouts (sometimes higher).

I had a fitness assessment done at the Y a while back and was initially very disappointed to discover that my cardiovascular fitness was only in the 22nd percentile - even though my resting heart rate was in the 90th (or more, I forget) percentile. The trainer told me not to get too depressed, because a lot of it is genetics. And since I have been seeing improvement in my fitness (how long I can work out, how hard, and how tired I feel when my heart rate is in the 150s or 160s), he said that it didn't necessarily mean that I was in "bad shape". He just said that I have a "smaller engine" for getting oxygen where it needs to be - whereas people like Lance Armstrong have a "large engine". I am going to get another assessment done after 6 months (that will be December) and see if I have managed to improve. (Some of it was also calculated based on weight, so once I am no longer in the "overweight" category that should automatically bump up my percentile as well.)

But it was very eye-opening for me to realize that there may have been a reason why I was never athletic as a kid, why my face always gets so red when I exercise - and that's it's not necessarily my fault. I am now happier to just do the best that *I* can do, and not trying to compare myself to people who can run a 6 minute mile.