Calories burned using HRM

reneealyse
reneealyse Posts: 100
in Fitness and Exercise
This morning I did a weights/cardio combined workout at the gym for one hour. When I finished I used my heart rate monitor watch to see how many calories I burned. There are two ways to use the watch, hold my finger tip on the sensor for 10-15 seconds until a reading comes up or choose a setting, easy, medium, hard, very hard, etc and it will use the setting plus the time you worked out for to workout the calories.

After this morning's workout I used my finger on the sensor and it said I burned 1101 calories. I was stoked, I did push myself and it's the first time I've done my weights programme the whole way through, I've never burned that many calories in a workout. Then I started to wonder if it was right so I tried it the other way, on the hard setting and it gave me a calorie reading of 550, half of the first reading.

So which one do I take as the right one?!

Replies

  • PKFitness11
    PKFitness11 Posts: 2
    Renee

    I have never seen a HRM that you could just touch the sensor once and it would give you a calorie burned reading. I am not saying that yours wont, I have just never seen them. I have had three Polars which had the touch sensor and they would only give me HR, I could get distance out of them because of the swinging motion of the watch. When doing my research I found that most HMRs that give you a calorie burned total use the continous input of HR over a period of time to do the mathmatical calculation. I currently use th Polar FT 7 which seems to be pretty accurate.

    I might suggest that you try your HRM using both functions (on each on two different days). My guess would be that if you do it once, then weight a few minutes and try the other way, you are dealing with the cool down period and a slower HR.

    It might be easier for someone to help you if you provide the type of HRM you are using.

    Paul
  • SmartAlec03211988
    SmartAlec03211988 Posts: 1,896 Member
    Without a chest strap it's probably not all that accurate.
  • reneealyse
    reneealyse Posts: 100
    This is the description for the watch:

    The Pulse / Heart Rate Counter / Calories Monitor / Sports watch can calculate calories burned while exercising.

    - Advanced sensor which detects your pulse from your blood pressure
    - This watch allow you to measure pulse rate throughout the period of exercise but do NOT want to use a chest strap
    - Just hold fingers on sensor for quick and accurate pulse rate / heart rate reading - within 3 - 8 seconds

    * It has been designed to calculate the calories burned and pulse rate of an average individual based on preset age, weight, and sex
    * Based on your preset information memorized by the watch, the time on the counter, and your heart rate, the calorie watch is able to determine how many calories you have burned during your workout

    Other functions:
    1.Time and calendar
    2.Daily alarm and hourly chime
    3.Chronograph (stopwatch) with split lap time
    4.Exercise counter with automatic and manual override calorie counter
    5.External pulse mode for determining heart rate at any time

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