Confused

Try these numbers and see if they help:

your heart rate should never rise above 220 - your chronological age (so if you're 30 your HR shouldn't rise about 190 beats per minute).

Stastistically you are burning most fat when your heart rate is between 70 and 80% of its maximum (again if you're 30 then that's between 133 and 152 bpm). If you are over this then your body is not focused on burning fat it's trying to get your heart rate down!

If your heart rate is ever above the 220 - age figure then you need to see a doctor and get an exercise ECG (also known as an EKG - I'm british, some doctors call this a cardiac stress test).

If you're not "feeling it" then you're not doing a heavy enough exercise, our bodies are trained to be efficient and will eventually learn to short cut through an exercise that you do often, either change what your doing or change how you're doing it for 6 weeks and then revert back. Changing about every 6-8 weeks will ensure that your body isn't cowboying you through your exercise regime.

You may burn more calories but you're screwing with your cardiac health, take it from the 22 year old pacemaker patient it's not a good idea.

Unless you have been tested in a lab, exercise training heart rates are all derived from a *estimated* maximum heart rate. All max heart rate estimating formulae have a standard deviation of + or - 10-12 beats/min. Based on the standard bell curve, that means that 2-3% of the population can have a true max heart rate of 30+ beats above the estimate.

You still need to rule out the presence of an asymptomatic but abnormal tachycardia during exercise, but your heart rate response is not unheard of and could be completely normal. The fact that your perceived exertion is low and you have no other symptoms is positive, but no one can tell you OK or NOT OK except your doctor.

I have seen this question/concern come up a lot when people first get heart rate monitors.

And in response to some other comments: there is no such thing as "fat burning" exercise. The fuel substrate utilized during exercise or any other activity has no direct effect on stored body fat. During the vast majority of exercise workouts, the body uses a combination of fuel (glycogen and triglycerides) already in muscle cells or circulating in the blood system. We do not tap into stored adipose tissue during exercise.

There are a lot of good reasons to do different workouts and workouts of varying intensity/duration, but you cannot structure a workout so that it "burns more fat".

Formulas for HRmax

Fox and Haskell formula; widely used.Various formulas are used to estimate individual Maximum Heart Rates, based on age, but maximum heart rates vary significantly between individuals.[5] Even within a single elite sports team, such as Olympic rowers in their 20s, maximum heart rates can vary from 160 to 220.[5] This variation is as large as a 60 or 90 year age gap by the linear equations given below, and indicates the extreme variation about these average figures.

The most common formula encountered, with no indication of standard deviation, is:

HRmax = 220 − age
This is attributed to various sources, often "Fox and Haskell," and was devised in 1970 by Dr. William Haskell and Dr. Samuel Fox.[5] It gained widespread use through being used by Polar Electro in its heart rate monitors,[5] which Dr. Haskell has "laughed about",[5] as it "was never supposed to be an absolute guide to rule people's training."[5]

While the most common (and easy to remember and calculate), this particular formula is not considered by some to be a good predictor of HRmax.

A 2002 study[6] of 43 different formulae for HRmax (including the one above) concluded the following:

1) No "acceptable" formula currently existed, (they used the term "acceptable" to mean acceptable for both prediction of , and prescription of exercise training HR ranges)
2) The most decent formula of those examined was:
HRmax = 205.8 − (0.685 × age)
This was found to have a Standard Deviation that, although large (6.4 bpm), was still deemed to be acceptable for the use of prescribing exercise training HR ranges.
Other often cited formulas are:

HRmax = 206.3 − (0.711 × age)
(Often attributed to "Londeree and Moeschberger from the University of Missouri–Columbia")
HRmax = 217 − (0.85 × age)
(Often attributed to "Miller et al. from Indiana University")
These figures are very much averages, and depend greatly on individual physiology and fitness. For example an endurance runner's rates will typically be lower due to the increased size of the heart required to support the exercise, while a sprinter's rates will be higher due to the improved response time and short duration., etc. may each have predicted heart rates of 180 (= 220-Age), but these two males could have actual Max HR 20 beats apart (e.g. 170-190).

Further, note that individuals of the same age, the same training, in the same sport, on the same team, can have actual Max HR 60 bpm apart (160 to 220):[5] the range is extremely broad

resting heartrates for an average male is 70 and for an average female its 75- but other factors go into this as well-

But, to understand more about heart rate and what factors can affect your beats per minute, let's look at how the heart works.

Whether you're Lance Armstrong or Larry Buttbig, your heart is constantly pumping blood, oxygen, and nutrients throughout your entire body.

Theoretically, the higher your resting heart rate, or the more times it beats per minute, the harder and more often your heart has to work to do its job.

Conversely, a lower heart rate implies that it's more efficient and doesn't need to pump as often. Lance Armstrong's is said to be about 30-35 beats per minute!

There are several other variables that affect your heart rate, so don't feel bad if you're ticker is working two or more times harder than Lance's. Physical fitness, exercise intensity, training frequency, and of course — the uncontrollable —

got this from womens fitness

What is a good, healthy resting heart rate

Your resting heart rate is how many times your heart beats per minute. The measurement should be taken when you are laying down and breathing normally and most health professionals say it is best to check it in the morning after a good nights sleep.

The heart rate is often used as a measure of a persons physically fitness and as such it is good to measure it now and again.

A resting heart rate for women is considered “normal” if it is between about 70-80 beats per minute. However, I would advise that those reading Real Women’s Fitness should have a much better resting heart rate than that! After all, we are hardcore athletes!

My resting heart rate is about 47-50 beats per minute.



What affects your resting heart rate?
The resting heart rate is affected by:

age
sex (men are lower usually)
physical fitness
some drugs/medication
genetics
anxiety
Some people simply have a higher/lower resting heart rate that cannot be attributed to any specific cause. Many scientific studies have shown that a resting heart rate really isn’t an effective way of measuring the health of a person although they say anything above about 84 beats per minute is erring on dangerous.