HRM Confusion....Help please

flamegirl72

I have a Mio Motiva heart rate monitor. It is a wrist model with no chest strap.....pause here to say that I am not looking for a bunch of responses telling me to get a chest strap because they are so much better and so much more accurate etc etc.....I have done my research on these boards and likely one of my next investments will be a Polar FT4 or FT7 as the come so highly recommended here......but that has nothing to do with my question.

My heart rate monitor is the two finger pulse taker kind and I am very diligent during cardio to take my heart rate often....usually at least once per minute more or less depending how intensity is changing.

I have been very leery though, as the calories burned have seemed extremely high....even for someone my size. For example, yesterday I walked for an hour at around 3.5mph pace and it said I burned over 1000 calories!!

All the info I entered is correct....weight age etc. But today I noticed that at some point in the past I took a resting heart rate reading of 52. I don't usually take this reading often....I took a new reading with was around 80 (wasn't completely at rest) and for todays workout the calories burned were quite a bit lower....more on the what I would consider normal side - 45 minute walk/jog for around 600 cals.

So here is the question after my long winded story....what affect does resting heart rate have on the number of calories you will burn during a workout? Is it the gap between your resting heart rate and the heart rate you reach when working out that determines the calorie burn??

flamegirl72

.............anyone.........???

wolf23

My only suggestion would be to take your heat rate manually with your index finger and your middle finger, finding your pulse either on your wrist or the side of your neck and compare it with the reading on your mio and see if they are similar. Of course you will need a watch with a second hand available. This will only determine whether your HRM is recording the correct heart rate. I am not sure the formula it uses to determine calories burned seeing there are too many different variables depending on one's age, gender and weight. I agree that a 1000 calorie burn seems a bit much. Hope this helps some.