Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Heart Rate Facts

By Viliam Kanis

What is heart rate? Heart rate (HR) is an indicator of heart's work and is calculated as number of heart contractions (beats) in one minute (beats per minute - bpm). Individual heart rate is very much influenced by physical fitness of the person, genetics, age and environment.

What is the heart rate reserve? Heart rate reserve is the difference between the maximum heart rate and so called resting heart rate. If your maximum heart rate is 200 beats per minute (bpm) and your resting heart rate is 60 bpm, then your heart rate reserve is 140 beats per minute (200 - 60). Trained people usually have larger heart rate reserve than those who do no sports.

What is recovery heart rate? Recovery heart rate is the decreased heart rate measured after period of time after the training. For example if your heart rate immediately after the training was 185 beats per minute (bpm) and after 2 minutes your heart rate decreased to 110 bpm, then the 110 bpm represents your recovery heart rate. Together with maximum heart rate, recovery heart rate also helps to determine the intensity of your training.

How does the heart rate decrease after training? The time that the heart needs to decrease its rate to resting rate is individual. Typically, trained people do have higher maximum heart rates, their heart can work longer with higher heart rates, their resting heart rate is lower then the heart rate of an untrained individual and they need less time to reach resting heart rate. With semitrained person, the heart rate drops at least 20 beats per minute (e.g. 180 bpm during the training, 140 bpm or less after 2 minutes).

What is resting heart rate? Resting heart rate represents number of heart beats in one minute while you are at rest. The resting heart rate is best measured if you did not perform any activity for at least 10 minutes (standing up from the chair is considered an activity!), ideally after waking up the natural way, without an alarm (an alarm signal causes stress in organism and results in an increased heart rate) still resting on the bed.

What is maximum heart rate? Maximum heart rate represents the highest number of heart contractions a person can bear. As maximum heart rate can be truly measured only during a moderated stress test under physician's supervision, you can estimate your maximum heart rate using the following formula: Maximum heart rate = 220 - age (in years); That means that if your actual age is 34 years, your maximum heart rate would be 186 bpm (220 - 34). The maximum heart rate of a trained person is higher than the maximum heart rate of the less fit person~Trained people usually have higher maximum heart rate than those who are less fit.

What is normal heart rate? There is nothing like average normal heart rate. A typical resting heart rate of a medium conditioned man is approximately 70 bpm. Genetics and mostly the physical fitness play a significant role. The resting heart rate of a well conditioned sportsman can be as low as 40 bpm as a trained heart Works more effectively.

What is a safe heart rate during the training? If your heart is healthy (means you never suffered from a heart disease or a heart attack) the safe range would be 70-80% of your maximum heart rate. This doesnt apply to people who are in cardiac rehabilitation, their exercise heart rate is limited at maximum 50-60% of their maximum heart rate.

What is the difference between Heart Rate and Heart Rate Variability? While heart rate refers to the number of times a heart contracts in one minute, heart rate variability refers to the beat-to-beat alterations in heart rate. - 16004

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