Heart rate during cardio

lexherrera

Here's a good guide for what percentage to target for different goals:

http://www.thewalkingsite.com/thr.html

Personally I stay around 130-150 when doing cardio.

But you're missing the bigger picture. Let's use nice round numbers for easy conversation.

Say you work out for an hour.

at 50% of max HR, you burn 300 calories, and at 75% of max HR you burn 450 cals.

Yes, more of those 300 cals burned at 50% of max will be from fat, but you're still only burning 300 cals, which at the end of the day means less weight loss.

I guess this could be important for really lean people who are looking to get to exceptionally low body fat %, but for 99% of us, more cals burned is more better.

I'm not trying to create a huge calorie deficit right now (actually I'm trying to maintain or gain slowly), actually focusing more on strength training, and I only do about 20 mins of cardio after I hit the weights. Already at about 20% BF and actually hoping to put on muscle, so weight loss is definitely not my goal. Makes me feel a little left out on here sometimes :P

invisibubble

Usually, for an hour of quite intense elliptical, I'm at average BPM of 175-190.

meshashesha2012

today my range was from 130-185. i did 4.78 miles of walk/running in 60 minutes.

i personally dont care about staying in a zone. i hate cardio so when i do it there's a goal in mind as opposed to just doing it. like today the target was to reach 5 miles. didnt quite make it today but i will next week

marywanoKC

I keep it somewhere between 155 - 165 for an hour long elliptical session with a resistance varying from 8 - 20. I'm 28 year old, ~320 lbs.

STrooper

Typically 135-150 bpm with a 20-25-pound pack and trekking poles.

Tends to be about 125-135 on the treadmill.

My max should be 167 and I hit that occasionally.

Morning resting is 56 bpm. I just checked and its running at 60-61 bpm.

I find it interesting how fast the rate recovers from exertion. Currently at 169 pounds.

meshashesha2012

i forgot to mention :
my resting heart rate is 65, i'm 41, 5'5 209 pounds and still have quite a bit of weight to lose.