Resting heart rate

Great job!

I definitely have it as a fitness goal. I've got a smart watch and love that I get an average resting heart rate over the course of a day or a month or even a year. It's so great seeing it coming down over time.

I've used my fitbit to track mine so I can keep track of my increasingly erratic cycles through menopause. Even with 6 months plus between periods, I've not been caught out by one, yet.

Great job!

I track it and want to see it go down, but it’s not something I explicitly work towards. For me it’s a pretty good indicator of stress and when to take a break and rest more, and it has taught me why alcohol is horrible for recovery. I’ve had a Fitbit since 2016 and I can tell dates of most hangovers pretty much by just looking for peaks in the graph.

Hanibanani2020 wrote: »

Oops, posted before the question. Who else focuses on resting heart rate as part of their regime?

Focus? No. Consider? Sure.

Gradually lower, good, but will stabilize (roughly) at a certain point (maybe because I don't devote the whole focus of my life to fitness improvement ). Gradually higher, not so good, but what to do depends on circumstances - could be overtraining, could be slacking off, could be aftereffect of one day over-goal eating , or lots of other possibilities.

Fitness-wise, I think heart rate drift and recovery is usually more interesting, along with heart rate at a known/metered output across X-length workout duration, and that sort of thing. If I'm faster for a given duration at a given HR, that's improvement that's meaningful to me. Resting HR is more of side effect. I'm not very technically well-informed or structured about it, though: It's more of a spitball thing.

I hope you don't get worried when it drops below 50, like me. I always have a lower RHR during my period, it drops to the high 40's and always freaks me out a little, lol.

Hanibanani2020 wrote: »

Oops, posted before the question. Who else focuses on resting heart rate as part of their regime?

Fitness was the focus and RHR dropping was a consequence of that.
Monitoring RHR casually does give me feedback on stress levels and something I'll watch quite closely during a particularly hard training block - elevated RHR can be a sign of overtraining.

Of more interest to me was the big increase in power at the same HR - not just at close to max sustainable HR but also for LISS and MISS. 25% - 30% increase in power at same HR gave me a significant performance boost for my sport.

My only 'goal' is to make the alarms go off when they check my pulse with the machine during my annual physical If it drops below 50 the alarm sounds (my RHR is in the low 40's so this isn't that hard for me to do).

I do track it and use it as one indicator of when I am over training or getting sick. I look for patterns. For example HR over 50 for more than a day or 2 tells me there is an issue that has to be addressed.

Not a focus, but I do watch it with interest. It varies with tiredness and hormones for me.

I dont focus on its but I have congenital heart defects and have to take a beta blocker when my palpitations act up. My BP and resting heart rate have to be at a certain point or I cant take the beta blocker so I do have to check it sometimes.

To those that track RHR, like with a Fitbit, what do you consider a deviation from norm which might trigger you to say "hey, I need a rest day" or "maybe I'm not getting enough sleep" mine has ranged from 45-47 for 3 months and recently jumped to and held 50 for several days.

richardgavel wrote: »

To those that track RHR, like with a Fitbit, what do you consider a deviation from norm which might trigger you to say "hey, I need a rest day" or "maybe I'm not getting enough sleep" mine has ranged from 45-47 for 3 months and recently jumped to and held 50 for several days.

To me, it's more like one of the gauges on the multi-gauge dashboard.

If I notice my RHR is up, I'd think about what else is going on, and consider why. If it makes me realize my workout performance is sputtering a little, for no other obvious reason, or something like that, then I might take a rest day. Looking at the sleep data (even though my tracker does a stupid-ridiculous job tracking that) would give me hints about whether the issue is sleep rather than training overload, or, frankly, just thinking about what sleep has been like the past few days. Other considerations: Did I overeat (or over-drink) recently? Could I be coming down with something (stuffed up or other symptoms)? Am I a little puffy (water retention)? Etc.

That's making me sound like a hypochondriac, but I swear I'm not. My point is that RHR is just one indicator, and other factors are involved in evaluating it.

richardgavel wrote: »

Hanibanani2020 wrote: »

My RHR fluctuates from 47-55 and I’ve never been concerned. It jumped to 89 one day and that afternoon I came down with bad flu that lasted nine weeks so that was a good indication. If you’re worried I would seek medical advice though.

Wasnt worried so much as trying to figure out how large "normal" variations can be.

Lately - with a little lower consistent activity/exercise during shelter-at-home, mine's mostly been hanging out in the low to mid 50s, say 52-56, usually. For a day or two here or there, for various reasons, it'll hop up to mid-60s, say 64-66. (Usually, I have some inkling why, but not always.)

If you're not noticing anything else weird when yours jumps to 50 for a few days, from the mid to high 40s, I personally wouldn't see any big reason to worry. But I have no expertise whatsoever, just experience.

I would be curious if my heart rate is one of the reasons I used to sweat all the time.

So, through my teens and through my twenty's I sweat through shirts, it was quite normal for me to sweat through multiple shirts in a day even though I was inactive. I bought special undershirts with a pad in the armpit to save my nicer collard dress shirts. I could be driving in a car with the AC on MAX and sweat through a shirt, annoying. I started exercising and paying attention to my health in my 30's, I noticed when I stopped exercising for a year is when I started sweating like mad again, when I regularly exercise I don't sweat when i'm inactive.