What is an Exercise Heart Rate?

Are you not pushing yourself enough or overexerting yourself while working out? If you are looking to optimize your fitness level by tuning up your exercise routine, tracking your heart rate can be the best option. 

Whether you are hitting the gym daily, running on trails for hours, or in stand-up paddleboarding, your maximum heart rate data can tell you how effective the workout is, keeping your ticker in check.

But what is exercise heart rate? Unpack everything essential you should know about heart rate monitoring to level up your body fitness.

What is Heart Rate?

Heart rate is the pace of the heartbeat counted by the number the myocardium (heart muscle) contracts over a minute. 

As the heart beats, it pumps oxygenated blood and nutrients throughout the body and carries back deoxygenated blood and waste products. 

The cardiac cycle consists of two phases: 

• Systole: Systole is when the heart contracts, and the right two chambers (right atrium and right ventricle) pump deoxygenated blood out and send it to the lungs through veins.
• Diastole: Diastole occurs between two subsequent contractions when the myocardium relaxes after a contraction. During diastole, purified oxygenated blood enters the left two chambers (left atrium and left ventricle) from the lungs and gets distributed around the rest of the body through arteries. 

The heart rate is a factor of an individual’s physical requirements, including the need to take oxygen in and excrete carbon dioxide. 

However, it gets modulated by other factors:

• current fitness level
• genetics
• psychological condition
• diet habit
• hormonal condition
• long-term medication
• chronic diseases
• cardiovascular illness and more

Your heart rate is usually equal or proximal to your pulse measurement at any peripheral point.

Resting Heart Rate (RHR)

Normal heart rate, also termed resting heart rate, is the number of times your heart muscle contracts per minute to pump the required oxygen to your body when you are relaxed. For an adult man or woman, RHR can lie anywhere between 60 bpm to 100 bpm. However, the lower the resting heart rate is, the more efficiently the heart muscle can function, and the fitter the cardiovascular system is. For instance, RHR as low as 40 bpm can be standard for an expert endurance athlete. A WHI (Women’s Health Initiative) report demonstrates that women having RHR at the low end of the spectrum (60-100bpm) are less prone to cardiovascular issues and heart attacks than those with higher RHR reading.

Maximum Heart Rate (MHR)

It’s the speed at which your heart muscle has to contract to function to its hardest to pump oxygen-rich blood and meet your body’s requirements. Your Max heart rate is the key player in defining your aerobic capability—the amount of oxygen you can take in. 

It enables triathletes to design their exercise program and tailor it based on their current fitness level and body stats. Plus, your MRH reading informs you of how hard you can push your body to hit your target heart rate zone without overexerting yourself during an aerobic exercise. Different observational analyses have revealed that high aerobic capacity is associated with a decrease in CVD (cardiovascular disease) risk factors of high blood pressure and cholesterol.

Target Heart Rate (THR)

Target heart rate is usually defined as a percentage of your heart rate Max and indicates the minimum number of times your heart beats over a specific time to hit the level of exertion essential for cardiorespiratory fitness. Your THR varies with the intensity of the workout you perform. As a rule of thumb, it ranges between 50% and 85% of your MRH. Your MHR is your age subtracted from 220 and is specific to a person’s gender, age, or fitness level.

TRH chart based on age:

Age (years)	Target Heart Rate (bpm)50%-85% of HR Max	HR Max (bpm)
20	100-170	200
30	95-162	190
35	93-157	185
40	90-153	180
45	88-149	175
50	85-145	170
55	83-140	165
60	80-136	160
65	78-132	155
70	75-128	150

• Maintaining a heart rate closer to the lower end of the spectrum helps you work out for longer and offers more weight-shedding benefits.
• Keeping your heart rate proximal to the highest end of the spectrum ensures better cardiorespiratory soundness. 

Target Heart Rate Zones

Training in a specific TRH zone ensures you are not overstressing your body and still making the most of the workout. Understanding how hard you can exert your body helps you hit your workout targets faster and safely. 

You can count on the workout intensity, duration, and frequency to maximize cardiovascular training efficiency. Exercise intensity is the measure of exertion you feel while doing an exercise. It’s your perceived body exertion and can differ from individual to individual. Intensity is a subjective and complicated topic that brings the THR zones into the scene.

Based on the effort level, there are five target heart rate zones. In each THR zone, the body may use either fat, carbohydrate, or protein as a source of energy and undergo a different level of exertion. 

• Very Light Intensity Zone (less than 57% of HR Max): Activities like bike riding, fishing, or slow walking fall under this category. While you will not burn calories or shed weight in this zone that you can with high-intensity activities, very light workouts are great for faster recovery after a bout of vigorous exercise.
• Light Intensity Zone (57%-63% of HR Max): It’s the lower end of the moderate-intensity HR spectrum and helps you shed weight faster, control issues like high cholesterol and hypertension, etc. In the light HR zone, the body extracts 85% of the required energy from the deposited body fat, 10% from carbohydrates, and 5% from protein. 
• Moderate Intensity Zone (64%-76% of HR Max): The higher end of the moderate-intensity HR zone. Sports like biking slower than 10 miles/hour or brisk walking get you to exert strenuously enough to burn off 3-6 times more energy over a minute than you do by involving in very light-intensity workouts. 
• Vigorous Intensity Zone (77%-95% of HR Max): Activities like tempo training or strength training performed to build aerobic endurance and make the body produce more ATP through aerobic metabolism are termed vigorous-intensity exercises. In this range, the exertion level is the highest, resulting in frequent breathing and a higher heart rate. While training closer to the higher end of the vigorous-intensity HR spectrum, the body supplies 85% of the energy from carbohydrates, 15% from fat sources, and less than 1% from proteins. 
• Maximal Heart Rate Zone: 96% to 100% of MHR: Maximal intensity workouts can be sustained no longer than a few minutes and includes short bursts of vigorous-intensity activity alternated with light intensity recovery spans. You burn off 10% fats, 0% carbs, and less than 1% protein in this HR zone.

How to Measure Your Heart Rate?

While you can measure your heart rate by calculating your pulse data, putting on a fitness tracker or chest-strap heart rate monitor is the best option to track your heart rate accurately and efficiently.