Average heart rate of 191 while exercising?

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I weigh 186 and I'm 5ft2, I'm 20 years old and recently got a polar FT7 HRM. Yesterday I did about 40 mins with an average heart rate of 185 and burned 550. Today I did 53 minutes, again on the elliptix at a crossramp of. 11-15 (intervals) and a resistance of 8. My average heart rate today was 191 with a maximum of 199. I burned 750. I was incredibly tired afterwards but am wondering if this seems accurate?

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  • angieleighbyrd
    angieleighbyrd Posts: 989 Member
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    that seems a little high, but there are a lot of factors with heart rate.

    if you don't think your hrm is functioning right then take a manual heart rate to check it.
  • AZKristi
    AZKristi Posts: 1,801 Member
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    As a general rule, your max heart rate should be about 220 - age. For you, this would be about 200. You usually want to exercise between 65-85% of your max heart rate. For you, this would be 130 - 170. You can go to 90-95% of your max heart rate to push your anaerobic threshold but this should be for short intervals. You probably don't want to keep your heart rate so high for an extended period of time.

    Some ideas... check your HR manually a few times during the workout to make sure it is accurate. If the reading is off, make sure your chest strap is secure and tight. Make sure you aren't getting interference from another transmitter - try going to another part of the gym or outside and checking again.

    If it IS accurate you may be dehydrated. Dehydration lowers your total blood volume and speeds up your heart rate. Or, you may just have a high resting heart rate due to low fitness. If this is the case, just back off on the intensity a little bit. You can still do intervals where you push your heart rate to 90-95% max - just make sure you have recovery intervals as well. High intensity interval training - where you cycle between intense exercise and recovery pace is the best thing to improve cardiovascular fitness.
  • passmetheducksauce
    passmetheducksauce Posts: 211 Member
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    my question is why are you doing such high intensity cardio? are you training for a specific event? if not, you are damaging your body doing intense workouts.
  • alyssa92982
    alyssa92982 Posts: 1,093 Member
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    that seems pretty high, my highest i go is 180 or so and that is with insanity workouts, that is all i can handle too i think !!!
    i would be careful if i were you, maybe consult with your dr about your rate.
  • Katrinadionne1808
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    I have to say that when I first started out the machines were telling me that my HR was within that range. It has come down a bit now.

    I am 29, 5' 4 and 63.7kg. This morning I have done a 30 min kettlebell workout and have used my Polar FT7 which I bought the other week. Average heart rate 151, maximum 188 so you're not far off me. My problem is I feel like if I slow down to reduce my heart rate then I look like I'm being lazy so it's just trying to get into that frame of mine.

    Another day I did 24 minutes on the cross trainer, set at level 12 random, Average HR 174, Maximum 191. In terms of fatburn it did nothing and was mainly fitness.

    However I did a 45 minute class of LBT and my average HR was 131 with a maximum of 168, but that class I spent more time fat burning as opposed to fitness (your FT7 tells you how much of your workout was fat burn vs Fitness)

    So based on mine, for fatburn I think I definitely need to look at more classes, using weights and so on as opposed to relying solely on the machines. Might be worth considering too. So thanks for this post, it made me look at how I am training!

    If you want to compare your FT7 you can use this calculator http://www.shapesense.com/fitness-exercise/calculators/heart-rate-based-calorie-burn-calculator.aspx