Why Heart Rate Training?

Getting your Heart Rate (HR) elevated for 30 minutes (or more) will improve your fitness and help you burn body fat. Heart Rate training is a very good way of ensuring that you exercise at the correct effort level. Too many people start too fast and put themselves off (or get injured). Start easy and build up from there.

For many people fast walking will get them into the correct HR zone. If you’re fitter, you may need to jog or even run. You can go swimming, cycling, dancing, or anything aerobic. Even enthusiastic housework can count.

Most activity monitors (Garmin, Apple watch etc) will calculate your HR training zone for you. As you get older, the HR that you need to go at gets lower. For example, if you’re 30 years old, 130bpm – 170bpm is your target HR training zone, for 40 years old it’s 117bpm – 153bpm, for 50 years 111bpm – 145bpm.

I find these numbers pretty accurate to work with, as the fitter you are the lower your resting HR, so you will need to do more work to get to the zone. The zone is 65% to 85% of your MHR (Maximum heart rate = 220 – your age).

If you’re not interested in an activity monitor, simply wear a watch with a second hand (or use the stopwatch function on a smartphone). You can manually check your pulse by placing two fingers (your index and middle fingers) flat against the side of your throat, just beside your oesophagus, or windpipe. You should feel a pulse, if not, then move your fingers, flat around your neck until you feel it. It may take a few attempts, and note that the higher your heart rate, the easier your pulse will be to find.

When you’ve perfected the method, you can briefly stop moving, and count your pulse for 10 seconds timed on a stopwatch or watch. Multiply the number by six, and you have calculated your beats per minute. 20 beats in 10 seconds is 120bpm, which is often a good pace to go. That is how to get fit and enjoy it!

This is an excerpt from Tracy Griffen’s book ‘Get Fit & Enjoy It: Learn Effective Exercise without a Gym’. Get your copy from www.getfitandenjoyit.com