| FitTip: Find Your Target Heart Rate |
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| by Diet Detective Editorial Staff | |
| Friday, 07 July 2006 | |
You don't need a mathematician to figure it out. Here's the quick and easy way.
You know you need to keep tabs on your heart rate during exercise, but
do you know why? Conventional wisdom says that if you exercise at a
target heart rate of between 65 and 80 percent of your maximum heart
rate, you'll experience improved cardiovascular fitness; if you keep
that rate slightly lower (between 55 and 65 percent), your body will
burn fat most efficiently. You don't need to be a mathematician to
figure out your target heart rate; here's the quick and easy way:
1. Subtract your age in years from 220. (This provides the maximum number of heart beats per minute expected for someone your age.) For example, if you're 30 years old, the equation would be 220-30 = 190. 2. Multiply the result by the lower and upper limits of your ideal range to find the proper exercise intensity zone. Say you're after a great cardio workout. You'd multiply your maximum heart rate (our example is 190) by .65 to get your lower limit (124). Then you'd multiply your maximum heart rate by .80 to calculate the upper limit (152). To monitor your heart rate during your workout, put two fingers on the carotid artery on the left side of your neck, count the beats during a six-second period and add a zero to the count to get your heart rate per minute. It should fall within your lower and upper limits (124 and 152). Bookmark:            Trackback(0)
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