HRM Accuracy

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Does anyone know how accurate a heart rate monitor is? I bought one an tried it while I was out mowing my lawn, it said I burned over 700 calories but if you look up "mowing the lawn" in the exercise section it showed like 300 calories for the same time period. It seems odd that they are so far apart.

Thanks

Replies

  • huntindawg1962
    huntindawg1962 Posts: 277 Member
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    The HRM calorie expenditure will show the total burn during the activity including the base calories one would have burned had the just been sitting in a chair (your BRM burn rate by the minute). The activities on here are only estimates for a bodyweight too so they won't be exact.
  • dad106
    dad106 Posts: 4,868 Member
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    If it is set up correctly(age, weight, height, gender) has a strap and is used during steady state cardio(IE walking, running, etc) it will be about 80% accurate. If you add in Vo2max or tweak max heart rate, I believe it goes up to 90% or something like that.
  • manyhats
    manyhats Posts: 13
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    I wondered the same thing, I have a cheap one that only asked for age and gender. It reads my calories as way higher then I think they really are.
  • thatdude3
    thatdude3 Posts: 33
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    Thanks, I will just use a percentage of what the HRM tells me.