Understanding Your Heart Rate

Your heart is a muscle that is located on the left side of your chest and is about the size of your fist. It sends blood throughout your body, providing it with the proper nutrients and oxygen that it needs. The heart is also made up of four different blood filled areas which are called chambers. Each side of the heart contains two of these chambers that are used primarily to send blood to your lungs. This is why the need of cardiovascular exercise is important because the more blood being transferred from your lungs to your heart, the more calories you are burning.

A person’s heart rate in an exact measurement can and will determine one’s fat loss progress. With physical activity, the heart rate increases to supply the muscles with more oxygen so that the body produces more energy. The heart can beat up to two-hundred times per minute and the brain controls this rate by sending nerve signals to the heart. The rate in which a person’s heart beats depends on intensity of exercise, activity levels, and genetics. There is no "one size fits all" average for heart rate, it will vary on the individual.

A person’s resting heart rate is simply the number of times that your heart beats while resting. The average resting heart rate is anywhere from fifty-five to eighty-five beats per minute. Your resting heart rate gets higher as you get older and is lower with physically fit people. Athletes sometimes measure their resting heart rate as one way of finding out if they have overtrained. Measuring your resting heart rate is also used to determine a person’s target heart rate.

Athletes use a heart rate monitor as a training aid in identifying their maximum heart rate (MHR) to determine their needed training zones. The easiest method of calculating your maximum hear rate is to subtract your age from 220. Studies have show that one’s MHR on a treadmill is five to six beats higher than on an exercise bike, and two to four beats higher than on a rowing machine. It was also found that physically fit people over the age of fifty are likely to have a higher maximum heart rate that the average person of their age group.

This article was intended to provide you with the basic information of calculating your heart rate and information that will become useful when deciding to start your own cardiovascular workout. You also need to take into consideration that you don’t have to burn yourself out by calculating every single step you take to measure your heart rate. Believe it or not, some people actually do this and are looked at strangely by others as well. If you want to burn more calories, simply eat less or become more active, you don’t have to get scientific until you are advanced enough to know what you’re doing. Until next time, later!

*http://www.stevenscreek.com/goodies/hr.shtml
*http://kidshealth.org/kid/body/heart_noSW.html
*http://www.smm.org/heart/lessons/lesson1.htm
*http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=4701
*http://www.brianmac.demon.co.uk/maxhr.htm
*http://www.active.com/calculators/heartrate_calc.cfm

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