Table of Contents
What’s this
Heart rate (HR) represents a important value to understand and monitor our state of health. According to the American Heart Association (AHA), normal HR for an adult at rest should be between 60-100 bpm. If the values exceed 100 bpm at rest, a tachycardia condition is identified. If, on the other hand, the values are lower than 60 bpm at rest, we speak of bradycardia. It is not always about pathological or worrying conditions, just think that athletes tend to have less heartbeats in order to improve their performance. The heart plays a fundamental role in this perfect machine that we can call the body. The number of beats that the heart makes every minute also joins another value that is found in the calculation of pressure. This last value refers to the force exerted by the blood, as it flows inside the vessels, on the walls of the vessels themselves. They are two different parameters that tell us a lot about our physical condition. It should be remembered that every day our mental, physiological and mechanical set-up changes and our discipline and power to adapt change. External conditions, work, relationships, temperatures and the environment affect these values and they come together with how we sleep, what we feel emotionally, how much we move and how.
How to use it during training
A good way to understand how our heart works? Buy a heart rate monitor that we need to adjust the effort according to the goal. After setting the subjective parameters, you need to set the right training limits. It is important to use it to be able to quickly reach good physical shape and also to monitor progress, avoid excessive or insufficient efforts. The heart rate monitor instantly measures the frequency in BPM (beats per minute) or in terms of percentage based on a maximum value that is reached in maximal effort and which should never be exceeded. The latter is measured by gods test under strainor with an easy empirical method (Kennet Scott Cooper’s formula) the difference between 220 (theoretical maximum heart rate also referred to as HR Max *) and the personal data expressed in years. Once you get the maximum limit of reference you go to calculate the specific value based on what you want to get from the training.
The heart rate intervals that make us work well should be respected: if you work between 50 and 60% of the maximum heart rate you go to promote general health. If we work between 65 and 75% of the maximum heart rate we go to burn fat deposits in excess (activation of the lipolytic function). Using heart rate therefore allows us to adapt to the goal. Do we want to feel good globally? Do we want to lose weight and burn? We need to understand what the reference values are based on these objectives. If we increase the work interval between 65 and 85% of the maximum heart rate we go to make an aerobic effort; an aerobic effort is identified as that work that makes the body develop a way to use the oxygen of breathing in the best possible way based on training. These are all those types of workouts that allow us to develop great physical endurance such as walking, endurance running, swimming, cycling over long distances. Working in this range means working in the so-called optimal aerobic zone. If we exceed 90% as a reference value of the maximum heart rate we go to make one intense anaerobic effort and in these conditions the organism produces energies in the absence of oxygen to develop the force and the power to shoot.
Learn to listen and measure yourself
Depending on the training objective, it is understood how much to “push”, how to stabilize the heart and within which numerical categories of reference of the percentage. Over time, as you continue to train, it develops like an internal speedometer. Slowly we begin to observe the breathing and the way in which the energies are being dosed. You begin to listen well to the sensations, the impact, the tiredness, the pleasure during training. The first few times you can use heart rate bands connected to the devices to be able to detect the heart rate and then put the data next to what we feel, how much we are pushing and how we are breathing. You build your own internal parameters and learn to feel your body better and better. It is valid for running but also for training practices such as martial arts or Pilates training on machinery or other types of training including walk.
One last very important factor: those who learn to measure themselves through heart rate data sometimes risk going towards an unproductive control anxiety for workouts. Getting to obsess over measurements prevents us from enjoying the session of any workout with pleasure and therefore nullifies its beneficial effects. It is therefore important to maintain an attitude of pleasure, without forcing too much the desire to grow and gradually increase one’s performance level. There wrist heart rate, in other words, it represents an important detection value, but we must never forget what happens inside ourselves / and when we train, always trying to enjoy it. We have the fundamental sensor in our heart and in our desire to feel good.
Read also
