Having your heart rate monitor on while weight training.

BobMcCloskey

I was wondering if it's a good idea to have your heart rate monitor going while doing some lifting? It's still exercise. Does anyone do that?

Yep! I do it all the time! I've actually modified my lifting routine to get a better cardio burn. No waiting between sets! I just do a different exercise, and then another and another and another, and then I go back to the first station and start over. I get my heart rate up into the high 140's doing this.

Great fat burner!

1brokegal44

I wear mine. I'm still huffing and puffing, exerting myself and working up a good sweat. Count those burned cals!

cwolfman13

Here's one part of this whole thing I don't get:

Y'all keep saying that HR is only porportional to calories burned in the case of lower body steady state cardio -- so it would make sense that, take cycling for example, this means the calories are being predominantly absorbed by your quads, and other auxillary leg muscles.
So what about a set of squats? I bet a set of squats recruits more muscle fiber than biking at the same HR for the same amount of time? So then would it be approaching a good estimation for lower body workouts involving big muscle groups??

The algorithm used by a HRM assumes some kind of steady state cardio as an indication of some % of VO2 max the individual is at. Anaerobic exercises like weight lifting are not good measures of VO2 max and thus the algorithm becomes invalid regardless of whether you're doing legs or upper body. The further away from a steady state cardio event you get, the less accurate a HRM is estimating burn...it's even an estimate for aerobic cardio...there is no way to 100% determine your calorie burn without very sophisticated technology (way more tech than a HRM)

Azdak

Zombie thread walks again. Physiology hasn't changed in the past few months, so the answers are still the same.