Accuracy of HRM

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LoriB57
LoriB57 Posts: 26 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
According to the treadmill HRM, 30 minutes of interval running burns about 200 calories on my 54yr old 126 lb body, According to various charts, when I run outdoors for 40 minutes, about 300. My new HRM watch told me I burned 450 calories running outdoors..NO WAY ! I believe I set it up correctly, but that's extreme IMHO. What do you find to be the most accurate? Usually I JUST DO IT ! I haven't tried it yet for weight training, using JM30DS....intense! What do you burn?

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  • Puffins1958
    Puffins1958 Posts: 614 Member
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    What kind of HRM did you purchase? Did you get one with the chest strap? I have a POLAR FT40 with the chest strap. I LOVE it!!!! :flowerforyou:

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  • LoriB57
    LoriB57 Posts: 26 Member
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    It's Timex and has the chest strap. I mostly wanted to see my heart rate to get an idea. And time my runs. Not all that serious, JUST DO IT ! Love that advice!
  • Puffins1958
    Puffins1958 Posts: 614 Member
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    The MAIN reason why I purchased one was.....I knew how many calories I was burning when I was on the treadmill and that was it. I had no idea how many calories I burned while I was working with my PT or doing any kind of circuit training....
  • Codefox
    Codefox Posts: 308 Member
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    Well, there's a huge variance. I think Polar when it comes to calories burned is probably more accurate than Timex. I say that having, just today, switched from my RS300x running watch to the new Timex Run Trainer. I did a 4 mile, 40 minute run today that I didn't even consider particularly hard and my new Timex said I burned 866 calories. My Polar on similar runs has never been above 450 or 500 depending on the intensity. One thing I noticed immediately was that my Polar watch allowed me to enter more data such as VO2 max which Timex does not and I think that makes a significant difference in the accuracy of calories burned.

    If you want the most precise HRM for caloric burn measurement then you need a Polar, IMO. I switched to Timex almost entirely because I wanted a more accurate running watch and I knew I'd be sacrificing that stat. That said, all of the HR monitors should give you an accurate HR measurement no matter what 8)

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