HRM???

megan4487

Ok this is probably going to sound stupid, but I see everyone talking about them, and I was just wondering what the benefit of them is, and if anyone has suggestions of some good ones that are not god awful expensive. I'm newer to the working out scene, but I would like to get a more accurate count of how many calories I am buring.

Thanks in advance for the all the support and help!!! Have a great one everyone

starr68

I am also interested in finding out. I live in Canada, and not sure where would be the best place to look.

bethvandenberg

Heart Rate Monitor. The best have chest straps and a watch and it tracks how many calories you burn during a workout and tells you what your heart rate is so you know if you're in the right workout zone.

sent4rmabove23

Well, I bought mine mainly to track actual calories burned and this way I know exactly how many excercise calories I can eat. I bought a Polar FT7 for $109.95 on heartratemonitorsusa.com - It's priced the same as Walmart but I didn't have to pay taxes or shipping.

BigAL456

To keep an accurate count of the calories burned during your workout. I use a Polar FT7. It's not the cheapest nor the most expensive. It's easy to use and comes with a chest strap. Hope this helps.

cillytilly

Amazon has good prices on them. I found one that is the talk of the town around here for about 20 less than everywhere else. I am getting the Polar FT4 here soon in the mail.

travishein

For me I am a runner and cyclist now, and have always been interested in tracking my distance and times, before I used a smart phone application like runkeeper or endomondo. They are great free apps for GPS logging and their own communities. But lately I also wanted a heart rate monitor to have it better compute my calories burned, because usually when I bike I am pulling kids in a bike trailer, and there is no way the smart phone app can even accurately estimate calories that way without a heart rate monitor I think.

Now if you do have a smart phone like iphone, I did see there are some heart rate monitors using add on plug in things for iphone. I don't have one, just Google "iphone heart rate monitor" . the endomondo site I use has a store and sells some too. There are also some bluetooth heartrate and pedal cadence meter sensors that work with the android app over bluetooth somehow.

But more lately I have been eying up this Garmin 305 sport watch with heart rate monitor.

https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?pID=349

and is available at costco too

http://www.costco.ca/Browse/Product.aspx?Prodid=10290136&lang=en-CA

Its in the $160-$200 range. I think it would be worth it for the GPS tracking for my outdoor activities, as oposed to just getting a heart rate only monitor and having to also mess with my separate GPS tracking applications. But then again I am outdoors type. If you are on a treadmill or indoor activity, maybe just a heart rate monitor is better or cheaper.

Because I find the cell phone applications to be flakey and differently behaved on different cell phones (sometimes the GPS receiver on a phone is not as good as on other phones). And the cell phone battery life is not as long as I need it to be for my outings. So I end up losing all my activity data when it crashes on me. Gee thanks. Now before when I started out it was good enough for casual use. But still very much lacking in the heart rate monitor that I now really want to start learning how to work with.

And as a cyclist and a runner, I think this sport watch idea would be great because I no longer need to get me a special bike computer as well. So I'm hoping to get one in the next month or two when I have some spare fundings to afford it. I can let you know by then how it works too if you like.

update: though i realize now thru more reading up on it this model does not do heart rate based calorie computations.. which is what i want really . but it would be good affordable tool for my use still I think.

phatsoslim

I love mine. It lets you know if you are in your target heart rate zone, best place to be for losing fat. Some, not all, tell you how many calories you burn while working out. I highly recommend one with calories burned, it will allow you to log in more accurately.

Depending on how much you want to spend. Do some research first online and compare different ones. I bought a Suunto M4 and as I said, "I love it!" It has a seven day plan, it lets me know which days are exercise days and rest days. On exercise days, it tells you how hard you should work and for how long. Personal settings to add your stats. Check it out www.suunto.com
There is a store locator on the site. They can be purchased online www.mec.ca. I also saw them in Toronto at Atmosphere, in Waterloo, ON at Adventure Guide. I picked mine up for $160.00 plus tax. I have changed my profile picture to my HRM, only mine is not pink around it.

I hope you find the right one for yourself. : )

megan4487

For me I am a runner and cyclist now, and have always been interested in tracking my distance and times, before I used a smart phone application like runkeeper or endomondo. They are great free apps for GPS logging and their own communities. But lately I also wanted a heart rate monitor to have it better compute my calories burned, because usually when I bike I am pulling kids in a bike trailer, and there is no way the smart phone app can even accurately estimate calories that way without a heart rate monitor I think.

Now if you do have a smart phone like iphone, I did see there are some heart rate monitors using add on plug in things for iphone. I don't have one, just Google "iphone heart rate monitor" . the endomondo site I use has a store and sells some too. There are also some bluetooth heartrate and pedal cadence meter sensors that work with the android app over bluetooth somehow.

But more lately I have been eying up this Garmin 305 sport watch with heart rate monitor.

https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?pID=349

and is available at costco too

http://www.costco.ca/Browse/Product.aspx?Prodid=10290136&lang=en-CA

Its in the $160-$200 range. I think it would be worth it for the GPS tracking for my outdoor activities, as oposed to just getting a heart rate only monitor and having to also mess with my separate GPS tracking applications. But then again I am outdoors type. If you are on a treadmill or indoor activity, maybe just a heart rate monitor is better or cheaper.

Because I find the cell phone applications to be flakey and differently behaved on different cell phones (sometimes the GPS receiver on a phone is not as good as on other phones). And the cell phone battery life is not as long as I need it to be for my outings. So I end up losing all my activity data when it crashes on me. Gee thanks. Now before when I started out it was good enough for casual use. But still very much lacking in the heart rate monitor that I now really want to start learning how to work with.

And as a cyclist and a runner, I think this sport watch idea would be great because I no longer need to get me a special bike computer as well. So I'm hoping to get one in the next month or two when I have some spare fundings to afford it. I can let you know by then how it works too if you like.

thanks so much, I would love to hear how it works for you!!

travishein

Hi again. sorry to post on old thread.

So this week I splurged on that Garmin 405 sport watch with the heart rate monitor. It doesn't use the HRM for the advanced calorie computation, but that's really an excessive thing I guess. for tracking time, distance, calorie burn, and heart rate, it seems to be excellent, easy to use.

It was almost $300 after taxes here, but was at my local running room store. I got it after talking with another running aficionado I work with at my office. he got one of these and has only good things to say.

It is of course much more than a HRM, but for my increasing intensity and duration with the biking and running it is perfect.

I did look more into getting HRM for that endomondo application that I ran in my cell phone. However it is likely just my bad luck with me having a Samsung Galaxy android phone, but I find my phone randomly crashes or reboots. the radio antennas in it musst be terrible, because i barely get GPS or cell phone service everywhere. at the start the GPS takes 5 minutes to lock on and sometimes during a run it loses its signal, so if the thing doesnt outright crash on me before i finish a run or run down the battery on the phone, i have sometimes half useful data. but it has been a lot of headaches and stressful messing with it. compared to this garmin sport watch, which just bloody works, and is also somewhat water resistant (unlike phones).

Here is a picture of my output from their software to log and track your progress

http://www.travnet.org/image/fitness/first_run_garmin_405.png




I can see here my heart rate going up slowly over time while maintaining the same pace on the same terrain, I am not drinking enough yet. as my blood is thickening from becoming dehydraded.. probalby.. but bam! first time for me running with a HRM and I now have something new to look up and learn about now. So happpy