Do you check your Heart Rate ? And How often as part of your fitness regiment?
mpkpbk2015
Posts: 766 Member
I was visiting with a friend of mine who is really fit and into fitness. She said I really need to begin to start keeping up with and checking my heart rate as I workout more. Do you check your heart rate? If so how often? And do you think it's important just looking for some opinions and outlook on the subject. Here is my current or starting point not sure if it's good bad or ugly I have lost almost 100 pounds so I am sure it's better than 2 years ago.
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Replies
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I keep an eye on my resting heart rate, which has gone down gradually as I've gotten fitter. If it goes up again, it's usually a sign I'm coming down with something or not resting enough.
As for my heart rate while working out: I don't really watch the numbers themselves, but I check for trends within the same workouts. My heart rate gradually getting lower for the same running distance and speed etc.2 -
I keep an eye on my resting heart rate, which has gone down gradually as I've gotten fitter. If it goes up again, it's usually a sign I'm coming down with something or not resting enough.
As for my heart rate while working out: I don't really watch the numbers themselves, but I check for trends within the same workouts. My heart rate gradually getting lower for the same running distance and speed etc.
Good information so as I go the maintenance phase I will keep and eye out on trends my friend didn't go into great detail she just said I was being remiss in not keeping up with it. Thanks
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I don't usually check it directly any more while exercising, and instead go by perceived exertion. For my goals (general fitness) I tend to aim for around a 6 to 8, occasionally spiking to 9-10 briefly.
That said, 96 could be a bit low for a max HR if you're healthy and have no medical issues. What exertion level does it feel like then?
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No. I always rely on RPE for everything. Sometimes I get clients who say "well I couldn't stay within my working heart rate today. It was really hard to." It's just one of those days. Somedays you're stronger or more efficient than others. So to be fixed into a certain heart rate and NOT be able to sustain it, could just hurt or harm you (injury due to fatigue) and that's NOT what you want. Some days you just have to train at a lower intensity. And that's normal. The body is smarter than most think. It knows when it's pushing limits and not.
A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
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I don't really check it when I'm working out...it is displayed on my screen on my device when I'm Zwifting as well as on my bike computer when I'm riding outdoors, but I don't pay a whole lot of attention to it or train in any particular HR zone. Right now I'm doing a program on Zwift that is mostly various interval work at X% of my FTP, so I'm much more focused on holding the watts the program is telling me for the duration it tells me to than my HR. I did over/unders yesterday, and my HR was all over the place depending on if I was working over my FTP, under at tempo, or in a rest between blocks. On free rides and such, either inside or outside I may look at it occasionally...but usually a casual free ride is pretty reliably somewhere between 130 and 140 BPM.1
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I observe it during cycle rides but mostly it's just an observation about how hard I'm working. (Power produced is my main training metric.)
For indoor more technical/regimented training I might use it as a guide to sustainability e.g. if I'm doing a FTP test I know pretty well what my sustainable highest HR is for 20mins. Comparing HR to my power produced for extended periods is a good guide for cycling.
I check my RHR (first thing in the morning) periodically as one of a number of rough guides to my current fitness level. In a hard training block I'll monitor my RHR more regularly as for me it's a fairly reliable guide to over-training. My normal RHR is around 48bpm and I know if if increases by 10% or more it's a sign I need to rejig my exercise intensity and recovery.
As you have remarkably changed your health for the better then watching your RHR decline can be a nice indicator of improved heart health as can faster recovery rates after exercise or during interval training.
Your numbers aren't good, bad or ugly - just a reflection of you right now and what you have got up to today - the low max HR today I would guess shows you haven't exercised yet?1 -
If you’re new to exercising or beginning a new type of exercise, it might be worthwhile to check it periodically throughout your workout. I’ve been at this long enough that I have a pretty good idea of when I’ve reached my maximum sustainable level. If I feel a need to slow down or pause, my HR on my watch inevitably shows the reason. I like to see the overall trends on my watch over time, but I don’t worry about it too much during an activity. I would be curious to see my HR while swimming, but HR is turned off in Swim Mode.0
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No. I always rely on RPE for everything. Sometimes I get clients who say "well I couldn't stay within my working heart rate today. It was really hard to." It's just one of those days. Somedays you're stronger or more efficient than others. So to be fixed into a certain heart rate and NOT be able to sustain it, could just hurt or harm you (injury due to fatigue) and that's NOT what you want. Some days you just have to train at a lower intensity. And that's normal. The body is smarter than most think. It knows when it's pushing limits and not.
A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
Thank you so much you have a wealth of information I appreicate your willingness to share. Also thanks for the info on the quote but this is all new to me. Have a great weekend.
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cwolfman13 wrote: »I don't really check it when I'm working out...it is displayed on my screen on my device when I'm Zwifting as well as on my bike computer when I'm riding outdoors, but I don't pay a whole lot of attention to it or train in any particular HR zone. Right now I'm doing a program on Zwift that is mostly various interval work at X% of my FTP, so I'm much more focused on holding the watts the program is telling me for the duration it tells me to than my HR. I did over/unders yesterday, and my HR was all over the place depending on if I was working over my FTP, under at tempo, or in a rest between blocks. On free rides and such, either inside or outside I may look at it occasionally...but usually a casual free ride is pretty reliably somewhere between 130 and 140 BPM.
I am sorry what is Zwifting ?0 -
I observe it during cycle rides but mostly it's just an observation about how hard I'm working. (Power produced is my main training metric.)
For indoor more technical/regimented training I might use it as a guide to sustainability e.g. if I'm doing a FTP test I know pretty well what my sustainable highest HR is for 20mins. Comparing HR to my power produced for extended periods is a good guide for cycling.
I check my RHR (first thing in the morning) periodically as one of a number of rough guides to my current fitness level. In a hard training block I'll monitor my RHR more regularly as for me it's a fairly reliable guide to over-training. My normal RHR is around 48bpm and I know if if increases by 10% or more it's a sign I need to rejig my exercise intensity and recovery.
As you have remarkably changed your health for the better then watching your RHR decline can be a nice indicator of improved heart health as can faster recovery rates after exercise or during interval training.
Your numbers aren't good, bad or ugly - just a reflection of you right now and what you have got up to today - the low max HR today I would guess shows you haven't exercised yet?
right I hadn't exercised yet. My friend said I should check first thing and then right after I workout to establish a baseline????
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If you’re new to exercising or beginning a new type of exercise, it might be worthwhile to check it periodically throughout your workout. I’ve been at this long enough that I have a pretty good idea of when I’ve reached my maximum sustainable level. If I feel a need to slow down or pause, my HR on my watch inevitably shows the reason. I like to see the overall trends on my watch over time, but I don’t worry about it too much during an activity. I would be curious to see my HR while swimming, but HR is turned off in Swim Mode.
Thank you for the information this is all new to me. Something else for my toolbox.0 -
mpkpbk2015 wrote: »cwolfman13 wrote: »I don't really check it when I'm working out...it is displayed on my screen on my device when I'm Zwifting as well as on my bike computer when I'm riding outdoors, but I don't pay a whole lot of attention to it or train in any particular HR zone. Right now I'm doing a program on Zwift that is mostly various interval work at X% of my FTP, so I'm much more focused on holding the watts the program is telling me for the duration it tells me to than my HR. I did over/unders yesterday, and my HR was all over the place depending on if I was working over my FTP, under at tempo, or in a rest between blocks. On free rides and such, either inside or outside I may look at it occasionally...but usually a casual free ride is pretty reliably somewhere between 130 and 140 BPM.
I am sorry what is Zwifting ?
Indoor cycling app (Zwift) for use with a bike and smart indoor bike trainer that can talk to the app. It's been a game changer for me for indoor cycling in the winter. Individual workouts and training programs are great too, and it's also fun to just tool around cycling one of the maps.
Can be used for running as well, but I don't run.
https://www.zwift.com/
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cwolfman13 wrote: »mpkpbk2015 wrote: »cwolfman13 wrote: »I don't really check it when I'm working out...it is displayed on my screen on my device when I'm Zwifting as well as on my bike computer when I'm riding outdoors, but I don't pay a whole lot of attention to it or train in any particular HR zone. Right now I'm doing a program on Zwift that is mostly various interval work at X% of my FTP, so I'm much more focused on holding the watts the program is telling me for the duration it tells me to than my HR. I did over/unders yesterday, and my HR was all over the place depending on if I was working over my FTP, under at tempo, or in a rest between blocks. On free rides and such, either inside or outside I may look at it occasionally...but usually a casual free ride is pretty reliably somewhere between 130 and 140 BPM.
I am sorry what is Zwifting ?
Indoor cycling app (Zwift) for use with a bike and smart indoor bike trainer that can talk to the app. It's been a game changer for me for indoor cycling in the winter. Individual workouts and training programs are great too, and it's also fun to just tool around cycling one of the maps.
Can be used for running as well, but I don't run.
https://www.zwift.com/
Thanks for the link I will check it out. Have a great weekend. I don't run either bad knees.0 -
True morning restingHR, upon awaking but not moving - can be useful as fitness improves, but also if body is starting to fight something HR will increase.
Or if exercise is not being recovered from, or life for that matter, and it'll increase.
So tracking that can be useful.
I have running that is mainly a recovery type workout from other things I enjoy doing more intense, so I'll set HR alarms on that for specific type of training to make it gentle enough.
If I go for what feels comfortable it's usually too fast and hard, and I don't get the recovery I really needed, and the next workout I wanted to be intense won't be.
Another trackable figure they may be referring to is HR recovery.
Notice the high HR you reached at the end of a workout, when you stop to do your standing or walking, what does the HR reach after say 1 min or 2 min, note that too.
Track that as interesting figure for fitness. Faster it lowers from similar high, the better fitness level.
That's not really an actionable item - just interesting.
RestingHR can be actionable if it's going up a few days in a row, and you have intense workouts.
If getting sick though, may already feel that coming on.1 -
mpkpbk2015 wrote: »I observe it during cycle rides but mostly it's just an observation about how hard I'm working. (Power produced is my main training metric.)
For indoor more technical/regimented training I might use it as a guide to sustainability e.g. if I'm doing a FTP test I know pretty well what my sustainable highest HR is for 20mins. Comparing HR to my power produced for extended periods is a good guide for cycling.
I check my RHR (first thing in the morning) periodically as one of a number of rough guides to my current fitness level. In a hard training block I'll monitor my RHR more regularly as for me it's a fairly reliable guide to over-training. My normal RHR is around 48bpm and I know if if increases by 10% or more it's a sign I need to rejig my exercise intensity and recovery.
As you have remarkably changed your health for the better then watching your RHR decline can be a nice indicator of improved heart health as can faster recovery rates after exercise or during interval training.
Your numbers aren't good, bad or ugly - just a reflection of you right now and what you have got up to today - the low max HR today I would guess shows you haven't exercised yet?
right I hadn't exercised yet. My friend said I should check first thing and then right after I workout to establish a baseline????
First thing in the morning to get a consistent resting HR.
Don't agree about just after your workout as that's going to be subject to big variations caused by the intensity and even volume of your workout. The speed at which you recover to "normal" after workout is a decent indicator of fitness.
By the way.... HR during strength training isn't a useful metric as it's elevated for reasons separate from oxygen demand.1 -
I do use heart rate during exercise, as a rough guide to how much fatigue I'm building up, and that sort of thing. I also do some activities that have objective performance measures (speed, for example). Over time, if I'm progressing in fitness, I can achieve the same speed at a lower heart rate, or keep working longer at a particular heart rate while feeling OK, and that gives me feedback about my progress. I look at some things others have mentioned, too, related to resting heart rate and heart rate recovery. All of that is interesting, but not essential, for me.
If a friend said that a person must stay in the "fat burning zone" to burn fat, or that there's some heart rate value that one must never go above, I'd be skeptical about their advice, personally.
(Absolutely, if your *doctor* tells you to stay in certain limits for a specific medical reason, that's a whole different thing, of course, and that advice should be followed!)
Some people mistakenly believe we only burn fat in the "fat burning zone", but that's not actually true. We burn a mix of fat and fuel from carb-type sources all the time, with that mixture tending to vary depending on the intensity of the exercise. That means the "fat burning zone" may matter to an endurance athlete for training or for planning nutrition during a long race, but it isn't a super-important concept for the rest of us.
It can be a good plan IMO for someone relatively new to exercise to keep things mild to moderate for the first few weeks, rather than extremely intense, in order to develop a basic foundation of good cardiovascular conditioning. Then, in more general terms, mixing intensities over the course of a week or so can be useful to fitness (plus as a boredom-buster), with some longer-duration milder exercise as the main course, and some smaller doses of high intensity as a sort of side dish or condiment. It works fine to use RPE to manage that, or heart rate can be a rough guide.
Some of the fitness devices will tell us what heart rate zone they think we're in, but that can be misleading. It's quite common to have a maximum heart rate different from the age estimates that those devices use by default. (There are ways to estimate one's true maximum, that can be done after some base fitness is in place; or there are sports-labs tests for maximum.) If one has a heart rate maximum very different from the age estimate, the zone boundaries will be different, too. (RPE can give you a hint about this.)
Heart rate data can be fun, and give some useful feedback, but it's not the be-all/end-all for the everyday recreational athlete, IMO.2 -
It's quite common to have a maximum heart rate different from the age estimates that those devices use by default. (There are ways to estimate one's true maximum, that can be done after some base fitness is in place; or there are sports-labs tests for maximum.) If one has a heart rate maximum very different from the age estimate, the zone boundaries will be different, too. (RPE can give you a hint about this.)
Heart rate data can be fun, and give some useful feedback, but it's not the be-all/end-all for the everyday recreational athlete, IMO.
I agree with everything you've said here, I just want to point out a common misconception concerning max heart rate (not to you, you get it, but for everyone else).
Some people confuse MAX HR as the MAX safe HR, that is not what it means. It means the max sustained rate at which your heart will beat under max stress. There is a common method of estimating this as 220 - age. Genetics, however, lead to different resting and max HR for people. You can't change your max HR but you can change your resting HR with fitness.
I wore a HR monitor when I trained for endurance races and knew my limit HR that was sustainable for a 5k, half-marathon and marathon. Outside of that, I don't find them that useful. I have a HR monitor that works with my GPS watch but since I no longer race, I haven't worn it in years.
Like others have mentioned here, I use the RPE methods mentioned above. I listen to my body and I listen to my breathing and use those as my indicators.
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FitAgainBy55 wrote: »It's quite common to have a maximum heart rate different from the age estimates that those devices use by default. (There are ways to estimate one's true maximum, that can be done after some base fitness is in place; or there are sports-labs tests for maximum.) If one has a heart rate maximum very different from the age estimate, the zone boundaries will be different, too. (RPE can give you a hint about this.)
Heart rate data can be fun, and give some useful feedback, but it's not the be-all/end-all for the everyday recreational athlete, IMO.
I agree with everything you've said here, I just want to point out a common misconception concerning max heart rate (not to you, you get it, but for everyone else).
Some people confuse MAX HR as the MAX safe HR, that is not what it means. It means the max sustained rate at which your heart will beat under max stress. There is a common method of estimating this as 220 - age. Genetics, however, lead to different resting and max HR for people. You can't change your max HR but you can change your resting HR with fitness.
I wore a HR monitor when I trained for endurance races and knew my limit HR that was sustainable for a 5k, half-marathon and marathon. Outside of that, I don't find them that useful. I have a HR monitor that works with my GPS watch but since I no longer race, I haven't worn it in years.
Like others have mentioned here, I use the RPE methods mentioned above. I listen to my body and I listen to my breathing and use those as my indicators.
Thanks for the clarification someone posted the RPE model and I made a copy for me. This is why I did this post to get a better understanding and reference point to work from. Have a great weekend, from the newbie to all this heart rate stuff. I know quite a bit about losing weight just need to get more fluent on the fitness piece.0 -
I record my heart rate when I exercise, but it isn't very useful to know in the moment most of the time. I might look at it later, to get an idea of the quality of the workout I got versus what I had planned - if it's that kind of thing. Sometimes I want to keep my HR in a certain range for a certain amount of time, I've been doing this long enough that I can tell if I'm on track or not by how it feels and by my breathing.
Using heart rate in exercise is as much art as science. It's useful to get a baseline like your friend said, get some other HR numbers to put it in context, and to really get the most out of it people geek out with software. A lot of people find that motivating, now I have to go see how this new thing works, I need to go see how my HR responds, etc. Any source of motivation is a good thing.2 -
NorthCascades wrote: »I record my heart rate when I exercise, but it isn't very useful to know in the moment most of the time. I might look at it later, to get an idea of the quality of the workout I got versus what I had planned - if it's that kind of thing. Sometimes I want to keep my HR in a certain range for a certain amount of time, I've been doing this long enough that I can tell if I'm on track or not by how it feels and by my breathing.
Using heart rate in exercise is as much art as science. It's useful to get a baseline like your friend said, get some other HR numbers to put it in context, and to really get the most out of it people geek out with software. A lot of people find that motivating, now I have to go see how this new thing works, I need to go see how my HR responds, etc. Any source of motivation is a good thing.
Thank you I think I am going to see how it differs for different exercises I am doing and how it correlates with calorie burn. I think that will be an interesting experiment if nothing else since I have the info on my device. Again thank you for your input and have a great weekend.
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Some people mistakenly believe we only burn fat in the "fat burning zone", but that's not actually true. We burn a mix of fat and fuel from carb-type sources all the time, with that mixture tending to vary depending on the intensity of the exercise. That means the "fat burning zone" may matter to an endurance athlete for training or for planning nutrition during a long race, but it isn't a super-important concept for the rest of us.
Heart rate data can be fun, and give some useful feedback, but it's not the be-all/end-all for the everyday recreational athlete, IMO.
Spot on as usual, @AnnPTT77. Endurance types are sort of weird in our hyper focus on nutrition and hydration planning, which doesn't really matter much to other people. And the bolded comment reminds me of something that stuck with me when a few friends were experimenting with a ketogenic diet as a means of becoming "fat adapted" athletes. Their saying was "Fat burns in a Carbohydrate Fire".1
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