wearing HRM for strength training

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seena511
seena511 Posts: 685 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
is it really useless to wear it? it seems like it should still give me a semi-accurate calorie burn based on my heart rate spikes when i do the actual lifts, but i've seen a lot of people on here say that HRMs can't give you an accurate number for weight traning, and i don't really understand why this is.

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  • yarmiah
    yarmiah Posts: 325 Member
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    I wear mine no matter what type of exercise I'm doing.

    Like most days, I wore it when working with my trainer(mixes cardio and strength training) and burned 452 in an hour.
    (That dosn't sound so useless to me! lol)

    My heartrate monitor with calorie burner serves mostly as a motivational tool.

    Wear your whenever you want. You may be surprised just how much extra calories lifting can burn!
  • murphy612
    murphy612 Posts: 734 Member
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    I wear mine and ignore the people who say it's useless. They may be right but I don't care :) I don't eat back my calories though and just use the calorie burn to set goals for my self with regards to exercise.
  • sgarrard01
    sgarrard01 Posts: 213 Member
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    If you search for this topic someone put up a really good post about it... basically the energy used during strength trining (as in real lifting, not crossfit style) is not areobic... your heartreight may spike hugely, but you aren't panting like there's no tomorow...

    When i was doing P90x i used a HRM and it seemed to work ok, but thats just as much cardio as weights, now I'm at maintancnce and lifting (5x5), i dont use a HRM, and i'm actually just tracking my weight and adding calories that way!

    Simon x
  • NobodyInParticular
    NobodyInParticular Posts: 352 Member
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    Use it.
  • ApexLeader
    ApexLeader Posts: 580 Member
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    wear it whenever you want. i use my hrm with endomondo and you can select "weight training" on it which should give you a smaller calorie burned number than if you select something like "aerobics." i think most programs probably have a way to differentiate between the two.
  • EmilyOfTheSun
    EmilyOfTheSun Posts: 1,548 Member
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    I know people say not to use it during lifting....I always have. And I eat back the calories that I "earn." It hasn't affected my weight loss.
  • okidoki7
    okidoki7 Posts: 151 Member
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    i wear mine, i dont eat back the calories, but it makes me feel great about myself which serves its own purpose :happy:
  • Daxton
    Daxton Posts: 17 Member
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    I log mine. It can't hurt, plus it gives you a little more safety net.
  • Vonwarr
    Vonwarr Posts: 390 Member
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    Basically when you're burning calories using your aerobic system, the heart rate can be used to ESTIMATE the amount of oxygen that is being taken in and used to burn. The speed at which you can absorb oxygen is the limiting factor. Hence we can guess the calorie burn based upon the limiting variable (the oxygen required to burn the fuel) by measuring a related metric.

    When you are mostly using your anaerobic system, your heart rate goes up in response to the strain on your body, and to increase your blood flow, but as you're not using aerobic energy, the oxygen burned is not the limiting factor.... Unless you start doing crazy supersets, circuits, or barbell complexes - Please note, I'm a fan of all of the above!

    Note that I emphasize the fact that it's all an estimate anyways, regardless of what you are doing. You could also multiply the number of minutes worked by 5 (average beginner doing easy exercise) and by 15 (muscular athlete doing something intense) and realize that your calorie burn probably falls somewhere within that range. Yes I know it's a big range.

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