Most of us know how to take our own pulse. Depending on your age, you likely learned it in elementary gym class, where everyone would stop, place their fingers on their neck (carotid artery) and quietly count as the teacher timed you. While this is a great method for checking your pulse, it isn’t the most convenient in the middle of a workout. One of the main benefits of exercise with heart rate monitors is being able to track your heart rate mid-workout without stopping.

Heart rate monitors track how many times your heart beats per minute. Known as your “heart rate”, this number can tell you just how hard your heart is working to pump blood throughout the body. Obviously, the higher your heart rate, the harder your heart is working. As your workout becomes more strenuous, your heart rate increases. So, how does knowing this benefit you? Well, the benefits of exercise with heart rate monitors are many but they all boil down to how the data is used.

Exercise physiology, or the science of the effects of exercise on the body, has shown us that the body reaps different benefits from exercise depending on just how hard it is working. For instance, working out in a certain range can bring maximum weight loss benefits. One of the best known and most utilized benefits of exercise with heart rate monitors is keeping your workout within this range, increasing the your heart health and your potential for weight loss.

Here’s a great post that details just how to find your target heart rate for weight loss. Using a high quality heart rate monitor to ensure you stay within this range is one of many ways to get the most out of your workouts. Heart rate monitors are far from an eye-pleasing workout accessory, they are a high tech way to really give each workout your all.

I know everyone has heard this one before, how it is so important to warm up before starting any fitness training program. You don’t want to pull a muscle or strain yourself. But did you know that if you don’t warm up before hand you’re just wasting some of your valuable workout, wasting time warming up during your actual workout. Your body is going to take the time to warm up wether you do it or not. We all live in a society where everything is just rush rush rush. It seems like we have less and less time to do our workouts, so why not make it count. Take the time before hand to get your heart pumping and get the most out of your fitness training program.

If you want to warm up properly for your workout, simple stretching won’t do. The whole point is to get heart rate up and to warm up your body. If your fitness training program is a real intense one, like the P90X, then you will want to do a much longer warm up session, although the P90X program does a great job of warming you up on its own. But for other programs doing a little jogging in place for about 10 minutes or for lower intensity programs a quick walk around the block, in addition to stretching, will do the trick.

Your resting heart rate is how many times your heart beats in a minute when you are at rest. When you heart beats it pushes blood throughout the body. People whose heart has to work harder will have a higher resting heart rate than those with a very strong heart. A very strong heart pumps more blood with each beat and therefore requires fewer beats per minute.
 
Your resting heart rate then is a decent indicator of your heart strength. The resting heart rate is best taken in the morning before you get out of bed. By placing your fingers on the neck or wrist to find a pulse and tracking beats per minute you will arrive at your resting heart rate. To avoid counting beats for an entire minute, you can count them for ten seconds and take the result times 6 for the same answer.
 
Many elite athletes have very low resting heart rates. Long distance runners who work their hearts on a daily basis through extended training and cardiovascular exercise may have a resting heart rate as low as 30 in extreme cases. Ideally, adults want to have a resting heart rate between 60 and 100 beats per minute. Average resting heart rates for men are typically 70 and for women, 75.
 
 
Because the resting heart rate can be a good indicator of overall cardiovascular health it is something you should monitor. It can be interesting to take your heart rate before beginning a fitness training program and then again several weeks into it. There is no doubt you will see a reduction in the resting heart rate.

Activities that strengthen the heart and therefore lower the resting heart rate are called cardio or aerobic activities. Cardio exercises are an important part of any fitness program, burning calories and increasing heart health. Things like running, brisk walking, kickboxing, and bicycling are all good cardio activities that will aid in the strengthening of your heart.

Your resting heart rate is also used to determine a number called your “target heart rate”. Your target heart rate is the number of beats per minute you want your heart to reach during cardio activities. This number represents a good spot for calorie burning and for increasing heart strength. Check out this blog post for more information about finding your target heart rate.

By using your resting heart rate as a measuring tool in heart health, you can see how your cardio program aids your heart strength over time. It’s fascinating to watch that number drop as your heart gets more efficient at pumping blood through the body.

Exercising for your health is an excellent idea. However, more people exercise with a weight loss goal in mind. For those people, maximizing their calorie and fat burning during exercise is very important. Knowing your target heart rate for weight loss can be a good tool in ensuring that you are exercising at an intensity that will maximize your fat burning and weight loss potential.
 
There are a few ways of determining your target heart rate for weight loss. The easiest is to take your age and subtract your age from 220. This is what is called your maximum heart rate. When doing a cardio workout, you can maximize your calorie burn by working out within 70-80% of your maximum heart rate. To determine this number simply multiply .70 x your maximum heart rate and .80 x your maximum heart rate. This will give you the optimal range for cardio workouts.

Example for a 30 yr. old man:
220-30= 190 (maximum heart rate)
.70 x 190= 133
.80 x 190= 152
Target heart rate: 143- 162 (approximately)

A quick internet search will show you there are several ways to determine your target heart rate for weight loss. Any of them will do as they come up with very similar results. This one is simply the easiest. If you are looking for more precise results, you could try the Karvonnen formula or a newer formula from the Harvard’s Men’s Health Watch, available here.

Once you have determined that ideal range for caloric burn, you can periodically monitor your heart rate during cardio activity. Keep in mind that as you become more fit, so does your heart. The intensity that once brought you to your target range may now not be enough. As you get fit, you will have to increase your level of intensity to maintain your target heart rate for weight loss.

A heart rate monitor is a great tool for staying on top of your heart rate. One that helps keep an eye on your target zone is a perfect companion to your fitness and weight loss goals. There are heart rate monitors available that use a chest strap to send ECG readings to a watch style receiver on your wrist. There are also slightly higher end heart rate monitors that require no chest strap and deliver quick results with the push of a button.

Heart health is just as important as weight loss. By being aware of your resting, target, and maximum heart rates, you can ensure you are working within a healthy range for your goals and your overall health.