Pedometers are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to fitness gadgets and motivational tools. The next step up the ladder to fitness awareness comes in the form of heart rate monitors. While a pedometer can show you how far you’ve gone and how much you exercised, a heart rate monitor can show you how well you exercised. Monitoring your heart rate is the best way to tell just how much you’ve exerted yourself during a workout.
When you are exercising, your heart moves blood from your lungs, where it picks up oxygen, to your muscles, where it burns the oxygen as fuel, and sends it back to your lungs again. The harder you exercise, the more fuel your body needs and the harder your heart has to work to get oxygen to your muscles. The harder your heart works, the faster it beats. This is where a heart rate monitor comes in.
You need to get your heart rate (beats per minute) to a certain threshold to ensure that you are working hard enough and getting more fit. If your heart rate is too low, you’re not working hard enough and your body won’t benefit as much. If your heart rate is too high, you might be damaging your body. By exercising too intensively, you’re putting your heart at risk and increasing the chances of injury. A heart rate monitor can literally tell you when your exercise is at the right point. Keeping your heart rate in this so-called target zone is key to burning fat and getting into shape.
Figuring out your target zone is not that difficult. It is typically 60 to 80% of your maximum heart rate. First, figure out your maximum heart rate, which is typically 220 minus your age. (This is a general measurement; more extensive tests are available at your doctor.) Multiply that number by .60 to get the bottom end of the target zone and by .80 to get the top end. Table 6.3 does this for you in a few age groups.
LISTEN TO YOUR BODY, NOT JUST YOUR HEART RATE MONITOR
When some people first use a heart rate monitor, they go by the readings on the watch to tell them how tired they are or how much they’re exerting themselves. This is a mistake. Always listen to your body when you’re working out. If you are tired, dizzy, or not feeling well in general, it doesn’t matter what your heart rate is. Stop exercisingat any point if you don’t feel well.
Think of exercising as a continuum. Your resting heart rate is your heart rate when you aren’t exercising. This is typically 60 to 80 beats per minute for the average person, and as low as 30 beats per minute for a very fit athlete. As you start exercising, you gradually get to 50% or so of your maximum. You burn body fat as you enter the target zone, at 60 to 70% of your maximum heart rate. You build aerobic endurance but you don’t necessarily burn body fat at 70 to 80%. Professional athletes, who don’t care about burning body fat, generally stay in the 80 to 90% or even higher zone. The key is to stay in the zone that you desire for as long as you can, atleast 20 minutes per session for effective exercise.
Intensity is different for everyone, by the way. Someone who is not in very good shape and is walking three miles per hour might be struggling and have a very high heart rate, while another person might hardly be working out at all. It’s all a matter of fitness. As your fitness improves, you can go faster, jump higher, and exercise longer at the same heart rate than youdid at slower performances in the past.
Heart rate monitors keep you motivated to do more and provide you with a benchmark from which to judge the effectiveness of your workouts. They teach you to exercise at your own ideal pace, they maximize your workout so you exercise as efficiently as possible, and they effectively serve as a training partner, providing you with real-time feedback on your workout. Also, unlike pedometers, many heart rate monitors are waterproof, so you can use them while swimming, and most will accurately measure your workout during cycling.
In general, you use a heart rate monitor by wearing a strap across your chest that wirelessly sends signals to a watch on your wrist. This strap is essentially performing a continual electrocardiogram, monitoring your heart rate. Some monitors track this data for later upload to your computer. Others just tell you your heart rate so you can monitor it during your workout.
Some models use earphones instead of a watch to literally tell you your heart rate. And a few heart rate monitors forego the chest strap completely, effectively serving as glorified pulse monitors. Because these devices don’t use a chest strap, they can’t continually monitor your heart rate. However, many people don’t like wearing a chest strap while exercising. It can be uncomfortable and it takes some getting used to.
Many heart rate monitors double as a wristwatch. However, since they were designed by exercise and medical device companies, some of these watches are not exactly attractive. This is changing, however, as many manufacturers are emphasizing fashion in their devices. You can get a heart rate monitor for as little as $50, or you can splurge and get a featurepacked device for several hundred dollars. It all depends on how many features you want. Basic models simply give you your heart rate. Others can sound an alarm when you are in the zone, above the zone, or below the zone; monitor the length of your workout; offer stopwatch features, workout splits, and lap times; and offer calories burned and the ability to upload your workout to your PC, among other features. Before buying a heart rate monitor, check it out to be sure you like how it works. The following sections detail a few of the leading manufacturersof heart rate monitors.
Fitness professionals offer the following tips for exercising effectively and reducing the risk of injury during exercise:
As always, check with your doctor before beginning any exercise program.
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