Need help from the health/workout gurus - heart rate monitor

[man]

trouthunter,

I can't tell what you're asking. are you asking what you should do for outdoor cardio, or are you asking what kind of heart rate monitors are good?

if you want to do cardio, we gotta know: what are your goals? what kind of exercises are you going to be doing? do you own a bike? do you swim? do you run?

I've never used a heart rate monitor before but I'd recommend going to a store like www.marathonsports.com , or any of a number of sports stores who can address your needs according to what kinds of workouts you wanna do.

[NeverLie]

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How can I tell when I'm at an aerobic peak if my heart rate is going to be dropping as it gets stronger? What's a good heart rate to start with for a 36 year old guy in bad shape with some extra weight but no history of any heart problems?

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The rule of thumb I've heard is that your maximum heart rate is 200 minus your age. But it varies from person to person. I can get mine up to 185 BPM and I'm 41.

And yes, your heart rate will drop as you get in better shape. You'll have no problem hitting your max when you start out. It'll get harder and harder as you get in better shape.

Doing a Cooper test or running some intervals is a good way to find your maximum heart rate IMO.

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So when you are saying your max heart rate you dont really mean your "actual max rate before you passout/die", its just a suggested max heart rate. Ie in workout terms your max heart rate is 200 minus your age, but in non-workout terms you could have a 250 max heart rate then you need to be hospitialized, but at 249 you wont need to be (just random numbers obv). Its not concrete, its a suggested max?

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Yes, suggested. The whole point is simply that higher is not better. It is possible to go over this max suggested heart rate, and this isn't good. If a 400 pound guy got on a treadmill, he could probably very easily get his heart rate very high. This does not mean that he is doing a good thing for himself. Some times it is better to "take it easy".

[skunkworks]

Yeesh. I see this thread has a lot of questions now floating around.

Guids, a lower heart rate is obviously more desireable since it means that your heart has to do less work to pump blood through your body and deliver oxygen to your muscles. However, everyone's hearts are different. For example, my heart rate is naturally high... it's around 80 bpm. It's been like this since I can remember (at least since I was 13; I'm 24 now). After training and running the LA Marathon, my heart rate dropped to around 75 bpm. Your heart rate is definitely correlated with your aerobic capacity, but it's not on an absolute scale. Someone with a resting rate of 60 bpm isn't necessarily more aerobically capable than someone with 70 bpm, but it's definitely more likely. Heart rate is not the best measurement for aerobic capacity; V02max is.

I think a lot of the confusion in this thread stems from why anyone would want to monitor their heart rate during exercise. It's not just a matter of going all-out to get your heart rate as high as possible; if you did that, you'd end up exhausted way too quickly. There's an ideal range you'd like your heart to beat at when you're doing cardio that provides whatever goal you'd like to achieve, whether it's fat burn or improving aerobic capacity. For example, I think for improving aerobic capacity, you might be running at 85% of your max heart rate, whereas for fat burn you may want to go lower so that you can exercise for longer without overwhelming fatigue. It all depends on whatever philosophy you prescribe to. Some people believe in Tabata to improve aerobic capacity, some people like tempo runs and endurance runs, etc.

I guess a lot of this is somewhat analogous to how lifters think about working to failure.

Edit: BTW, running isn't for pussies you meathead lifter [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img] Maybe you'd run more if the friction between your thighs didn't threaten to start fires

[Trouthunter]

I think I accidentally opened a can of worms. I am doing cardio right now. I'll listen to advice on that, but what I really wanted to know was what kind of heart monitor I should get. I just want a decent quality, reasonably accurate monitor and I don't want to be tied to the treadmill. There are people here way more into working out than I and I figured someone would have one they are happy with.

I'll check out the Polar ones mentioned by another poster. That sounds like what I might be looking for.

[guids]

ya that was my fault, I saw your topic and was curious, skunkworks post cleared it all up for me though, thanks.

[Trouthunter]

ok - those kick ass. That's exactly what I'm looking for. Thanks for the recommendation!

[skunkworks]

Trout,

Sorry about the thread hijack. I did a little bit of research into heart rate monitors before. Looking at some of the Amazon.com reviews of popular brands, I immediately got the sense that the cheap ones (< $60) are really hit and miss. Polar seems to have a very solid rep from what I can tell. But yeah, I highly suggest reading user reviews from Amazon.

[Milo]

Get a Polar. You decide which, depending on what you can afford, and what bells and whistles you want.

Find a local fitness center that can test your aerobic threshold. That will give you info on optimal ranges for your training. Most people train too hard.

[fiskebent]

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So when you are saying your max heart rate you dont really mean your "actual max rate before you passout/die", its just a suggested max heart rate. Ie in workout terms your max heart rate is 200 minus your age, but in non-workout terms you could have a 250 max heart rate then you need to be hospitialized, but at 249 you wont need to be (just random numbers obv). Its not concrete, its a suggested max?

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I mean the maximum heart rate I can push myself to. And it is in the "God, I think I'm going to die / pass out" neighborhood. The body is very much self regulating and I haven't heard of anyone in decent shape being able to push themselves into a state where they needed to be hospitalized. And on occasion I've pushed myself so hard that I vomited from running...

It's not very often that I push myself that hard. Usually I work out somewhere right below my anaerobic threshold which is at about 168 BPM for me. The anaerobic threshold is the level where lactic acid starts building up so fast in your muscles that the system can't get it out fast enough. So you can't perform at that level for very long.

Right below the AT you burn sugar primarily and can usually keep going for an hour before the sugar deposits are gone. Then the body has to switch to burning fat and your heart rate goes down.

[Trouthunter]

No problem. I'm fairly ignorant on this subject, so the conversation is interesting.