Measure Your Heart Rate
Heart rate is widely accepted as a good method for measuring intensity during running, swimming, cycling, and other aerobic activities. Exercise that doesn’t raise your heart rate to a certain level and keep it there for 20 minutes won’t contribute significantly to cardiovascular fitness.
The heart rate you should maintain is called your target heart rate. There are several ways of arriving at this figure. One of the simplest is: maximum heart rate (220 - age) x 70%. Thus, the target heart rate for a 40 year-old would be 126.
Some methods for figuring the target rate take individual differences into consideration. Here is one of them:
- Subtract age from 220 to find maximum heart rate.
- Subtract resting heart rate (see below) from maximum heart rate to determine heart rate reserve.
- Take 70% of heart rate reserve to determine heart rate raise.
- Add heart rate raise to resting heart rate to find target rate.
Resting heart rate should be determined by taking your pulse after sitting quietly for five minutes. When checking heart rate during a workout, take your pulse within five seconds after interrupting exercise because it starts to go down once you stop moving. Count pulse for 10 seconds and multiply by six to get the per-minute rate.