heart rate monitors

stephfannie86

May I ask how they can help you?

So far I know that they let you know when you are in your target bmp (beats per minute) and so it can help you calculate how many calories you burned in a day.

Does anyone know, how long you try to stay in your zone? Is it just how ever much you want to burn for the day? What do the health experts suggest in terms of staying healthy? They want 3 days of 20 minutes of excercise. How much of that time should you be in your target BPM?

stephfannie86

May I ask how they can help you?

So far I know that they let you know when you are in your target bmp (beats per minute) and so it can help you calculate how many calories you burned in a day.

Does anyone know, how long you try to stay in your zone? Is it just how ever much you want to burn for the day? What do the health experts suggest in terms of staying healthy? They want 3 days of 20 minutes of excercise. How much of that time should you be in your target BPM?

9726172000

You should try and get in atleat 30 minutes of Cardio not less than 3 days a week. The more calories you burn each time you excercise the better but they do say you don't get any better results if you do cardio more than 1 hour a day. The HRM's lets you know if you are in the Cardio Zone, Fat Burning Zone, ect.. and how many cals you had burned for that amount of time so you will know how many cals to adjust your daily intake on your food. I don't trust the excercise machines at the gym because even though you put in your stats(weight, age ect..) they are still not very accurate. The one's that I use say I had burned about 450 cals. but my HRM says I burned 700 cals. and what this site and another site say I had burned 675 cals. So for myself a HRM with the chest strap is very accurate in what cals. I am burning
You had asked how much time you should be in your target heart rate each time. Allow 5 minutes to warm up on the machine, 5 minutes for your cool down on the machine and try and be in your target heart rate zone for atleast 20 minutes and 20 minutes is the very minninum.

azwildcatfan94

I'm reading "Younger Next Year for Women" right now. The authors think a HRM is pretty important. It lets you know if you are improving, it lets you know if you are over-working yourself (if your resting heart rate starts going up), which zone you're in, etc. 65% of max is fat burning stage and 75% - 85% is the cardio zone. I believe you want to be in that 75% - 85% range for at least 20 minutes (but work up to it if out of shape). Then go longer. As you get in better shape, you will find you have to increase the intensity of the work out to get into that range. All the work-out buffs at my gym say that is a good thing. If you are exercising in the fat burning zone, you have to do longer workouts, but that is ok.