Heart rate ?

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  • Nyranee
    Nyranee Posts: 57
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    great post i asked the same question yesterday. mine peaked at 192 bpm on Sunday at the gym, i was doing interval training on the cross trainer this is the highest its ever gone that ive noticed.

    Ive bought a heart rate monitor so i can track it a bit better.

    Yes, got my heart monitor as well mainly to track calories burned but I needed to know what's the max I can go... will play with the numbers in a higher range now.
  • Nyranee
    Nyranee Posts: 57
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    Hi -- actually this is my first time posting -- although I have been on this site since April. I am a huge believer in heart rate based fitness.

    I would not worry too much about individual one or two second spikes too much as monitors can sometimes make an inaccurate read -- better to trust your body.

    What you want to do is find your "comfort zone" for sustainable exercises. This is a rate where you are likely sweating profusely and breathing hard enough that you find it difficult but not impossible to hold a conversation. It may take a week or two to find that zone if first starting out because your fitness level is poor and ANY exercise is going to be challenging; but, fight through it and your body will figure it out and adapt.

    Typically the maximum heart rate is 220 - your age. So say if you are age 40, your maximum target heart rate would be 180 (220-40)

    I am assuming you are not a triathlete or something but rather an average person trying to lose weight. In this case, and VERY IMPORTANTLY, this should NOT be your target hear rate for weight loss as it is unlikely to be sustainable nor for that matter even healthy in some cases.

    Typically what you want is to be exercising consistently with a "zone" that is 60% to 70% of your maximum heart rate and sustain your rate within that zone for a minimum of 20 to 30 minutes, and longer if you can. So for a 40 year old this would be a range of 108 to 126. Where possible you can push your rate up to 80% of maximum for 5 to 10 minutes (if you can) so maybe up to 144 in shorter bursts.

    I personally try to do one hour of cardio at 65% to 70% but mix in one or two 5 minute challenges to bump it up to 80% -- sort of like jogging but adding some sprints to your jog.

    There are several excellent heart rate monitors out there and i would recommend them as heart rate monitoring is also an excellent predictor of calories being burned.

    These are just indicators only so you need to listen to your body.

    I am pretty knowledgeable about fitness having dropped 25kg (about 55 pounds) over the past year but I am not a health or fitness pro. Of course you should get your heart checked by your doctor before doing anything to intense.

    Good Luck!

    Thank you for this detailed reply.

    a previous poster recommended 189 as my max heartrate:


    "Your MHR is around 189 BPM

    226 - your age 37 = 189

    for men its 220 - age "

    So if I combine that with your information I should be around the following numbers:

    65% to 70% out of 189 = 122 - 132
    80% out of 189 = 151

    I reach higher as I am THAT unfit so I will more likely look at spikes of 170 (90%) ...

    Again I walk most of the time in the 65-70% range but if I start running for a minute my heart rate goes more in the 85-90% range at the moment.

    Will try that for a while and see how my heart rate adjusts after getting fitter.

    Ah... I got my heart checked last week as I went very high but doctor says it's all ok heart wise but my thyroid medicine needs to be lower as that could increase the heart rate as well. So I reduced that but it takes a few weeks to adjust. so till then I try to train within non-critical ranges.
  • mutineer33
    mutineer33 Posts: 3
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    Those calculations seem about right. Don't get too discouraged if you have a lot of difficulties starting out as your body needs to adjust to the new effort you are forcing upon it. In my case (A year and 25 kg ago) I could barely do 15 minutes on my elliptical trainer before feeling exhausted because my heart was working so hard. Over a period of two weeks I adjusted to it, and later pushed to 20 minutes, then 30, 45, then 60. After 6 months the ellyptical trainer had gotten too easy for me as my body had adjusted to it that I was even having a hard time reaching the 65% target threshold ---- so I had to move on and find more challenging exercises

    It is a normal process to go through -- you just need to be determined and consistent in your effort (minimum 3 or 4 times a week) so your body can adjust..
  • Nyranee
    Nyranee Posts: 57
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    Those calculations seem about right. Don't get too discouraged if you have a lot of difficulties starting out as your body needs to adjust to the new effort you are forcing upon it. In my case (A year and 25 kg ago) I could barely do 15 minutes on my elliptical trainer before feeling exhausted because my heart was working so hard. Over a period of two weeks I adjusted to it, and later pushed to 20 minutes, then 30, 45, then 60. After 6 months the ellyptical trainer had gotten too easy for me as my body had adjusted to it that I was even having a hard time reaching the 65% target threshold ---- so I had to move on and find more challenging exercises

    It is a normal process to go through -- you just need to be determined and consistent in your effort (minimum 3 or 4 times a week) so your body can adjust..

    Thank you for these encouraging words mutineer33. I often expect too much in too short time so this post is of great help to remind me to just give things the time they need.
  • Jennvandemark
    Jennvandemark Posts: 179 Member
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    when I am doing intervals my average heart rate is around 145 but when i really push it I can hit 168-170 but it does come back down in about a min. When I first started working out it didn't take much for me to reach 168 but now that I am getting fitter it takes a whole lot of effort to reach 168.
  • 2hobbit1
    2hobbit1 Posts: 820 Member
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    Check out the WebMD site and calculator, It has a lot of good info!

    http://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/healthtool-target-heart-rate-calculator

    ===
  • Nyranee
    Nyranee Posts: 57
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    when I am doing intervals my average heart rate is around 145 but when i really push it I can hit 168-170 but it does come back down in about a min. When I first started working out it didn't take much for me to reach 168 but now that I am getting fitter it takes a whole lot of effort to reach 168.

    Hope to become fitter soon too.
  • Nyranee
    Nyranee Posts: 57
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    Check out the WebMD site and calculator, It has a lot of good info!

    http://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/healthtool-target-heart-rate-calculator

    ===

    Thank you will look around there.
  • mutineer33
    mutineer33 Posts: 3
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    Apparently we cannot edit our posts here so I wanted to update with a bit more detail and clarification from my first post.

    Typically the maximum heart rate is 220 - your age. So say if you are age 40, your maximum target heart rate would be 180 (220-40)

    I am assuming you are not a triathlete or something but rather an average person trying to lose weight. In this case, and VERY IMPORTANTLY, this should NOT be your target heart rate for weight loss as it is unlikely to be sustainable nor for that matter even healthy in some cases.

    Typically what you want for weight loss is to be exercising consistently with a "zone" that is 70% to 80% (light exercise like walking should be 60% to 70%) of your maximum heart rate and sustain your rate within that zone for a minimum of 20 to 30 minutes, and longer if you can. So for a 40 year old this would be a range of 108 to 126 for walking or other light exercises but 126-144 for real "cardio" . Where possible you can push your rate above the 80% of maximum for 5 to 10 minutes (if you can) so maybe up to 160+ in shorter bursts.

    I personally try to do one hour of cardio at 65% to 75% but mix in one or two 5 minute challenges to get out of my comfort zone -- sort of like jogging but adding some sprints to your jog.
  • yksdoris
    yksdoris Posts: 327 Member
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    I does stabilize a lot as you get fitter; overall the healthy heart rate depends on your age and general frame (for humans there's not that much variance but for example an elephant's resting heart rate is 28 and a mouse's 500 beats per minute); so basicaly a teenager will have a faster heart rate than a fully grown person.

    Anyways, when I first started working out I was really out of shape, I'd get up to 180-185 and stay there which supposedly isn't that healthy but it didn't feel any differentfrom 170 and I felt like I could still push myself. Now though, it generally stays between 160 to 180 even when I'm really really pushing (intervals).

    That sounds like your body learned to perform in that range. How long did it approx take you to have a healthier range permanently?

    The biggest breakthrough was interval training: before that I'd kind of crawl very slowly up the stamina incline but with intervals it stabilized within about a month.

    Though, for the past maybe... 3-4 months I've been doing very minimal pure cardio, just enough to warm up and then the rest of the workout is strength training (but, with max 35 second breaks inbetween sets, so it keeps my heartrate up) and I'm seeing that the cardio heartrate has not suffered at all, if anything it's gotten better.

    Edited to add: my brother is one of those annoyingly fit people, he's always been into sports and has a degree in physiotherapy; according to him one of the things that indicates how "in shape" you are is not only how high (or rather, how low) your heartrate spikes when you're really pushing it but also how fast it declines to normal again once you stop pushing. That's probably why the intervals are so effective: they repeatedly force your heartrate up, then down, then up then down.
  • Nyranee
    Nyranee Posts: 57
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    I does stabilize a lot as you get fitter; overall the healthy heart rate depends on your age and general frame (for humans there's not that much variance but for example an elephant's resting heart rate is 28 and a mouse's 500 beats per minute); so basicaly a teenager will have a faster heart rate than a fully grown person.

    Anyways, when I first started working out I was really out of shape, I'd get up to 180-185 and stay there which supposedly isn't that healthy but it didn't feel any differentfrom 170 and I felt like I could still push myself. Now though, it generally stays between 160 to 180 even when I'm really really pushing (intervals).

    That sounds like your body learned to perform in that range. How long did it approx take you to have a healthier range permanently?

    The biggest breakthrough was interval training: before that I'd kind of crawl very slowly up the stamina incline but with intervals it stabilized within about a month.

    Though, for the past maybe... 3-4 months I've been doing very minimal pure cardio, just enough to warm up and then the rest of the workout is strength training (but, with max 35 second breaks inbetween sets, so it keeps my heartrate up) and I'm seeing that the cardio heartrate has not suffered at all, if anything it's gotten better.

    Edited to add: my brother is one of those annoyingly fit people, he's always been into sports and has a degree in physiotherapy; according to him one of the things that indicates how "in shape" you are is not only how high (or rather, how low) your heartrate spikes when you're really pushing it but also how fast it declines to normal again once you stop pushing. That's probably why the intervals are so effective: they repeatedly force your heartrate up, then down, then up then down.

    That sounds very logic.

    I did 4 minutes walking, 1 minute running, 4 minutes, 1 minute running, 4 minutes walking etc for 30 minutes today and then some rowing and my heart rate was between 125-135 walking and up to 168 running. it slowed down slow after the peaks. kind of 1 minute to go down to 145 and another to go around 130 again guess that's not very fast. But I will continue doing these running walking combinations with tendency to increse the running.

    Tomorrow I have a body balance session, combination of Tai Chi, Yoga, Pilates, which I really love and I find it very challenging; so no running till day after.
  • emilypurplefrog
    emilypurplefrog Posts: 92 Member
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    I have an issue with this and have a family history of heart problems so I play it safe and Walk at 3.0 mph at an incline of 3.0. If I feel like I can push myself more I either up the incline or up the speed. Usually I end up rotating going either faster or having a higher incline every few minutes and I check my heart rate every few minutes as well.
  • Nyranee
    Nyranee Posts: 57
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    I have an issue with this and have a family history of heart problems so I play it safe and Walk at 3.0 mph at an incline of 3.0. If I feel like I can push myself more I either up the incline or up the speed. Usually I end up rotating going either faster or having a higher incline every few minutes and I check my heart rate every few minutes as well.

    and how high does your heartrate go with this ? I checked with the doctor last week. aparently my heart seems to be ok.

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