How To Measure Your Heart Rate During Exercise?

Why measure your heart rate during exercise?
Any load on the body is a test. And only the main engine – the heart – can tell you
whether you can handle this test or not. Constant monitoring of the pulse, like many other measurements, seems too complicated and unnecessary. But this is far from true. Carefully monitoring the distribution of loads during training is useful for everyone, especially beginners.

Why measure your pulse during exercise. How to measure your heart rate better
If you select the intensity of your workouts based on your heart signals, you will be able to train with equal effectiveness in any conditions: in any weather and at any time of day.

Heart rate will tell you when to increase or decrease the intensity of your workout. It will allow you to achieve the training effect in the shortest possible time and at the same time not to harm your health, doing exactly as much and at exactly the pace that suits you.

If you have a specific goal (“to lose” so many kilograms, increase endurance, learn to maintain even breathing for a long time, etc.) or you are training according to a special program “tied” to a certain pulse level (for example, a weight loss program through running), then you cannot do without high-quality pulse measurement.

In addition, by monitoring your pulse over a long period of time, you will learn a lot of interesting things about your success in sports. For example, when a beginner performs exercises of the first level of difficulty on an exercise bike, his heart beats at a frequency of 140 beats per minute. Two months later, the heart rate will already be 125 beats per minute. This result will tell you that it is time to increase the intensity of the exercises to the second level of difficulty.

What affects the pulse?
1. Fitness. The more the body is adapted to loads, the less often the heart beats. If for an ordinary person 40 beats per minute is evidence of pronounced bradycardia, then for a developed athlete it is a normal phenomenon.

2. Body weight. In obese people, the heart muscle is forced to work under increased load, so they often experience tachycardia.

3. Drinking alcohol and smoking . These two negative factors make the heart beat faster.

4. Emotional state. The cardiovascular system of each of us, depending on susceptibility, reacts differently to all sorts of events. For some, the heart rate increases, for others, it slows down.

5. Body and air temperature. The cooler it is, the slower the heart beats. And, for example, in a sauna, the heart rate of any person will be the same as during serious fitness training

A high heart rate indicates a more active work of the heart pump, which pumps a larger volume of blood https://gracify.co.uk/cork-vs-foam-yoga-blocks/. Depending on the above factors, the load can increase so much that our cardiovascular system cannot withstand it. Therefore, training should be balanced so that the load on the body is optimal - not weak, but not excessive.

What should your heart rate be during cardio training?
Depending on age and physical fitness https://gracify.co.uk/best-yoga-blocks-uk/, each person has their own maximum heart rate.

For men, the maximum heart rate is 220 minus age; for women, it is 226 minus age. 

What should be the pulse during running, during training
For a thirty-year-old man, this figure is 190, for a woman – 196

During the warm-up before running, the frequency of contractions should be 50-60% of the maximum. This is the safest load, allowing you to "get into" the rhythm of the workout