Feel the heartbeat of heart rate training.

Knowing your heart rate zone reminds you to take care of an appropriate level of exercise intensity.

Image: © ninikas/Thinkstock

Are you working hard – or working hard – during exercise?

Guidelines recommend a minimum of 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise per week. But “moderate intensity” can vary per person. What is difficult for one person could also be easy for an additional.

An excellent method to maintain your moderate intensity is heart rate training, where you exercise at 60% to 75% of your maximum heart rate. This is your cardio goldilocks zone where the intensity is just not too hard or too light, but good.

Entering the zone

What is your moderate intensity zone? First, it is advisable to know your maximum heart rate – the upper limit of what your cardiovascular system can handle during physical activity – as measured within the variety of heartbeats per minute.

One method to find your maximum heart rate is with a stress test, during which you walk or stand on a treadmill that makes you, and thus your heart, work slowly while the electrocardiograph records your heart rate. Monitors the electrical rhythm of the center.

While that is probably the most accurate method to determine your maximum heart rate, a less complicated option is to make use of a formula based in your age, which may give a superb approximation. Dr. Begish recommends 200 minus half your age. Once you already know your max, you'll be able to set your goal zone to 60% to 75% of that number. For example, a 70-year-old man's maximum heart rate can be 165 beats per minute. So, his moderate intensity heart rate zone can be 99 to 124 beats per minute.

Heart rate exercise

After determining your goal heart rate zone, your workout needs to be broken down like this, in keeping with Dr. Begish:

• A five-minute warm-up to step by step raise your heart rate to a minimum of 60 percent

• half-hour of exercise in your goal zone

• A five minute cool all the way down to get your heart rate back as much as normal.

It's also a superb idea to remain within the lower half of your goal zone (60%) for a couple of weeks and construct as much as 75%. “Also remember that if you can't carry on a conversation at any point during exercise, the intensity may be too high, regardless of your optimal heart rate zone,” says Dr. Bagish.

If you've gotten trouble staying in your zone for half-hour, do intervals: decelerate for a couple of minutes, after which increase the intensity until you're in your goal heart rate zone. Don't reach me again.

Hold there for one to 2 minutes or more, after which decelerate. Repeat the backwards and forwards cycle for half-hour. “As your conditioning improves, you'll be able to stay in your heart rate zone longer until eventually you can do the full 30 minutes,” says Dr. Begish.

Heart rate training is just not for everybody. Talk to your doctor about whether this is correct for you.

Monitor selection With a strap/watch combo, you wear a strap containing the transmitter around your chest with the transmitter near your heart. The transmitter picks up your heart rate and sends the information to a wrist receiver, which displays your heart rate. In contrast, fitness trackers use optical sensors that detect light getting back from blood flow under the skin to measure your pulse. Which is more correct? Research published in January 2017 JAMA Cardiology compared a strap/watch monitor to 4 popular fitness trackers and located that the strap system was 99.6% accurate, while the fitness trackers ranged from 92% to 97% accurate, and the trackers may very well be off by 15 to 34 beats per minute. . Some people should prefer the simplicity of a fitness tracker, but pay attention to its potential limitations and make the vital adjustments.