What is Heart Rate Training?

Keeping your heart rate (the number of times your heart beats in a minute) within a defined range during a workout is known as heart-rate training. The range is expressed as a percentage of your maximal heart rate, which is the most times your heart can beat per minute.

You can take heart rate training to the next level and use an app or device to track your heart rate in real-time.

A heart rate training program can help you develop a healthier lifestyle by building your endurance and improving your cardiovascular health.

In this article, we’ll discuss the benefits of heart rate training and how to use a heart rate monitor to get the most from your workouts.

Why Should You Train by Heart Rate?

Simply put, you should monitor your training via your heart rate because it is our body’s natural way of measuring effort. How hard your heart is beating directly relates to the amount of effort you are currently exerting. The harder your heart is beating, the more energy your body is burning.

The more your heart beats, the more blood you are able to pump around your body and the more efficient your muscles become at retaining oxygen from that blood. Over time, your heart will be able to pump more blood with fewer beats and your muscles will grow in strength.

Why is this important? Well, because the amount of effort you put into a workout will ultimately define the progress you make. If you are serious about your exercise regimen, monitoring your heart rate is a great way to ensure you are staying on track.

So What Exactly is Heart Rate Training?

Luckily, it is not as complicated as it might initially sound. Heart rate training can be as simple as wearing a heart-rate monitor while exercising. Then all you need to do is keep track of your heart rate and take note of any significant changes over time. It is pretty simple, but it can make a significant difference to your routine.

This is largely because it provides specificity to your workout that you can’t find anywhere else. More often than not, athletes will measure their performance by how fatigued they feel. For numerous reasons, this isn’t a great thing to do.

First of all, there is no way to know for sure that you are improving if all you are measuring is how tired you are by the end. If anything, it can be completely demoralising. How tired you become after a workout is dependent on a wide selection of variables, most of them external. It doesn’t necessarily correlate to your abilities.

Additionally, your fatigue level is almost impossible to analyse and measure. Sure, you know when you are out of breath or when your muscles ache, but how can you compare fatigue from one day to the next? It isn’t an entirely objective metric. Measuring your heart rate, however, has numerous benefits.

So What are the Benefits of Heart Rate Training?

Okay, so we’ve covered what heart rate training actually is, but how does it benefit you specifically? To answer this question, we have compiled some of the positives you can expect to enjoy once you introduce heart rate monitoring to your exercise regimen.

Increased Accuracy and Insight into Your Routine

We spoke about this a little bit in the section above, but it is worth revisiting. The detail a heart rate monitor can cover while you are exercising goes far beyond simply letting you know how far you have travelled. 

Sure, it’s helpful to know that you ran a few miles in a particular amount of time, but how did your body respond? With a simple distance tracker, you have no idea. With a heart rate monitor, you can keep track of how hard your body was working to keep you going. This allows you to measure progress closely with detailed feedback.

Provides the Tools to Actively Improve Your Performance

Heart rate training can be a great way to improve your overall performance. It not only provides you with greater accuracy, but also ensures you can stick to your previously set goals, and confirms your progress in a way that is completely measurable.

Having this kind of control over your exercise intensity is hugely beneficial. It allows you to tailor your routines precisely to your goals. Want to do a tough workout? Try to hit your maximum heart rate. Looking for a lighter workout? Aim for a mid-range zone. The decision is entirely up to you, as heart rate training gives you the accuracy to make an informed decision. 

Think of it this way: you don’t want to overexert yourself if you did a high-intensity workout just yesterday. However, you don’t want to take the day off either. With heart rate monitoring, you can ensure you don’t push yourself too hard on your next recovery run, which could result in injury. Heart rate training is beneficial for reaching your goals and for keeping you healthy. 

Improves Your Health Overall

Of course, improving your aerobic stamina and cardiorespitatory health is a huge plus in and of itself, but that isn’t all that heart rate training helps with. Athletes are known to have lower resting heart rates than the average person, which manifests in numerous health benefits outside of your workout routine.

A lower resting heart rate is a surefire sign that your heart is healthy and working as it should be. It requires less effort to pump blood around your body and therefore maintains a steady, healthy beat. 

A high resting heart rate can mean increased strain on your entire system, especially when physically exerting yourself. This can mean an increased risk of heart attack and cardiovascular disease. By following heart rate training, you not only improve your workout performance, you also benefit your health overall in the long-term. 

How to Start Heart Rate Training

First thing’s first, don’t jump into heart rate training if you haven’t been completing a consistent exercise routine for quite some time. It isn’t a practice designed for absolute beginners and could end up feeling totally discouraging if used in the wrong way.

Ideally, you should have been sticking to an exercise regimen for between four to eight weeks before jumping into heart rate training. By this point, you will have gotten a fairly good idea of your limits and have set out some realistic goals for yourself.

If you have been working out for a few weeks already, then it may be time to introduce heart rate training. The first thing you need to do is establish your maximum heart rate or MHR. There are a few ways you can do this.

How to Calculate Your MHR

A simple trick is to subtract your age from 220. For instance, if you are 40 years old, then your maximum heart rate should sit at 180 beats per minute. Simple maths, right? It gets a little more complicated when you start to calculate your desired intensity.

What we mean by this is whether you want to aim for a light workout, a moderate workout, or an intense workout. You should not be hitting your maximum heart rate during exercise. Though this might seem like the goal of an intense workout, that is actually just overexertion which can do some serious damage to your body. 

There are more exact ways to measure your MHR out there, though they usually require the addition of heart monitoring devices. If you have recently purchased a heart rate monitor, it may be able to tell you your MHR after a trial run.

How to Calculate Your Workout Intensity

Generally, for moderate-intensity exercise, you should aim to hit between 64-76% of your maximum heart rate. To work this out all you need to do is multiple your maximum heart rate by 0.64 or 0.76. This will give you the beats per minute you should be aiming for.

For example, if we take the maximum heart rate for a 40-year old that we calculated before:

180 x 0.64 = 115

180 x 0.76 = 136

Therefore, for a moderate-intensity workout, you should be aiming to achieve between 115-136 beats per minute. 

For a high-intensity workout, you should aim for between 77-93% of your maximum heart rate. Using the same figures above, this would look like:

180 x 0.77 = 138

180 x 0.93 = 167

So, for a high-intensity workout, you would want to aim for between 138-167 beats per minute. High-intensity workouts shouldn’t be completed everyday, as this could put too much stress on your body and may result in injury.

The different intensities of heart rate training are usually referred to as ‘heart rate zones’, which you should adhere to to ensure that you don’t overexert yourself. They can provide you with an ideal framework to base your fitness routines on.

What Variables Affect Your Heart Rate?

It isn’t just how much effort you exert that dictates how hard your heart starts to beat. Numerous internal and external factors can combine to alter your heart rate. Some of the most common besides exercise include, but are not limited to, the following.

Age

Generally speaking, the older you are, the slower your heart rate will be. This is especially true during physical exertion and in times of high stress. Since your heart can’t beat as quickly, your energy levels can diminish far quicker. However, an older person that has made use of consistent heart rate training will usually exhibit a far superior MHR than a younger person who has never trained their heart rate.

The Temperature

As you are probably already aware, your environment plays an enormous role in how your body functions. This is especially true when working out. Hotter climates naturally incur greater sweat and, therefore, can increase your heart rate significantly. In fact, did you know that for every degree your body temperature rises, your heart has to beat approximately ten beats per minute faster? This can make a monumental difference to how you exercise.   

Your Base Fitness Level

Those who have been exercising for quite some time, especially runners, generally have a much lower resting heart rate than those who are less active. To put it into perspective, most people have a resting heart rate of between 60 and 80 beats per minute. Some athletes have resting heart rates as low as 30 to 40 beats per minute. That’s a 50% difference! This clearly demonstrates the power consistent training can have on your body.

There are other variables that can affect your heart rate, including certain medications and your stress levels. Heart rate training can improve your performance in all areas. Like any muscle, your heart can be trained to be stronger. It just may take some serious commitment!

What are the Different Kinds of Heart Rate Monitors?

You aren’t without choices when it comes to heart rate training. There are multiple devices out there, each with their own set of distinct features to provide you with the best user-experience.

While we won’t be getting into specific details of any one product, we can advise you on the shape these monitors can take. Ordinarily, heart rate monitors either attach to your wrist, your chest, or your upper arm.

Which one you personally opt for is down to personal preference! A chest strap heart monitor often utilises an electrocardiogram to measure your heart rate. This can then be attached to your phone, where you can monitor your progress via an app.

An arm strap or wrist device works in much the same way, except you won’t need to use an external app with many of them as they utilise a screen. This can display any number of metrics to help you improve your performance, it all depends on the brand and design.

What are You Waiting For? Take Your Workout to the Next Level!

So there you have it, a full overview of heart rate training. If you are looking to take your fitness regimen to the next level, this could be the perfect way. Accurate metrics and measurable progress are integral components of any successful routine, and your heart will thank you!