Average Resting Heart Rate for Men

The heart is one of the most extraordinary organs in the body. This organ is such an organ that works continuously, right from birth until the death of the person, without resting for a second. Hence, when evaluating the overall health of a person, it only makes sense to evaluate the heart health as this is an excellent indicator of the overall health of a person. So, what is the average resting heart rate for men? Before we go onto answer this question, let us try and understand as to what exactly is the heart rate. The heart rate is the number of contractions that the heart has in the time span of a minute.

How to Calculate the Normal Resting Heart Rate?
The heart or the pulse rate is easy to measure. One just has to count the pulse or number of beats per minute to know one's heart rate. However, since you are trying to calculate the resting heart rate, you should ideally be lying down while taking the readings. Also, you should not have just finished with exercising or doing any kind of recent physical activity, as this may give you a faulty reading that may not lie in the range of the average resting heart.

Ideal Normal Heart Rate for Men by Age
When trying to find out what is a healthy resting heart rate, well, it is usually assumed that a heart rate that, on an average, lies in the range of 65 to 70. In most cases, the normal resting heart for most people is usually around 72 beats per minute. However, as a person ages, more often than not, especially in cases where the man may end up suffering from hypertension, he usually ends up with a high resting heart rate.

Why is a Lower Resting Heart Rate Favorable?
The lower a person's resting heart rate, the more likely it is considered to be a good resting heart rate. In fact, if you were to see the resting heart rate for athletes, you will find that it is quite low; well-known cyclist Lance Armstrong has a heart rate of 32 beats per minute! The reason why a low resting heart is considered to be healthy is that the number of contractions are lower per minute and so, this means that the heart is managing to push out more blood with each contraction. This translates to more blood and oxygen being circulated in the body while there is less amount of workload on the heart. And athletes manage to achieve this kind of a healthy resting heart rate for men by constantly trying to up their fitness levels. Given below is a resting heart rate chart that will help you understand where you fit in and what your fitness level is, better.

Age	RHR for Athletes	Awesome	Excellent	Very Healthy	Healthy	Below Average	Poor
18-25	49-55	56-61	62-65	66-69	70-73	74-81	82+
26-35	49-54	55-61	62-65	66-70	71-74	75-81	82+
36-45	50-56	57-62	63-66	67-70	71-75	76-82	83+
46-55	50-57	58-63	64-67	68-71	72-76	77-83	84+
56-65	51-56	57-61	62-67	68-71	72-75	76-81	82+
65+	50-55	56-61	62-65	66-69	70-73	74-79	80+

The heart rate is an important indicator of heart health as mentioned earlier. You don't really need a heart rate calculator to know what your heart rate is. So, try to evaluate your heart rate and see if it fits into the normal resting heart rate for men or not. And if it doesn't, then try to increase your fitness levels, which will definitely reflect in your heart rate, in due course of time.