Rested Heart Beats

jwshooter

Just counted my heart BPM ,72 . i did a hour jog this eve and just had a plate of pasta and a good glass of red.

i hit 170 bpm on a spin last week , out of interest whats yours and how do you use the information .

no links just your own ideas, thx

niceonetom

Resting heart rate, if there's any benefit to taking it, is to be taken first thing in the morning before any exertion, not just sitting there right now. Yours will be higher than that right now because of exertion during the day, metabolic processes (pasta), muscles being used to keep you upright, breathing, thinking etc.etc. First thing in the morning, lying in bed (with a hrm, not your fingers!) removes some of these and gives you a better idea of your true resting HR.

I used to take it to prve to myself I was indeed getting fitter. When I first started to cycle regularly it dropped from 60ish down to about 44 or 45 at its lowest. It's a good way of knowing roughly what kind of shape your in, and if it's suddenly a few beats higher it can indicate that you're stressed, overtraining or perhaps have a low level infection coming on. If you're really following it closely you can see it go up and down depending on the amount you've trained the previous few days.

Everyone has their own min and max HR and these vary with age, condition and health so there's no real value in comparing yours to anyone else's, but keeping track for comparison with your own records can be interesting.

Heart rate info can certainly be useful for training (zones etc.) but anything other than lab tests will give you a crude rule of thumb rather than a real idea of where your thresholds are.

victorcarrera

To the best of my knowledge the recomended time to measure your resting BPM is first thing in the morning before getting up. Preferably on the morning after a rest day or easy day. You might find that yours is significantly less than what you measured already.

zzzzzzzz

As Tom says, it's something you can take daily (in the morning) and you can use it to see if you're overtraining etc.

I did it for a while, but found it to be more hassle than it's worth. I'm usually in the region of 42-44bpm

mfdc

As has been said you're meant to take it in the morning in bed, I never remember though. Am laid up at the minute with a dodgy knee, after a week of doing nothing I counted 48bpm on Saturday afternoon lazing on the couch. Normally it's 60ish after doing some training in the morning.

Beasty

I normally check my resting heart rate when I have not done any exercise for a couple of days. It also takes effort to digest food, and hence it is better to wait until some time after eating. First thing in the morning (after a good night's rest) is probably the best time to do this.

The last time I checked (a couple of weeks ago) I got my heart rate down to 46 bpm. I was probably at around 65-70 before I started cycling.

There is a special term for resting heart rates of less than 60 - Bradycardia. It can be a sign of underlying heart conditions, or simply good health. I certainly like to think mine is the latter:) (Miguel Indurain has the lowest recorded rate amongst sportsmen - 28).

It can be used to determing your Heart Rate Reserve (the difference between your maximum and resting heart rates) which then provides a measure of the effort you are putting in (based on hoe high up the scale you are)

Stokolan

Im not fit at all and my resting is 45 first thing in the morn. In work they've been getting readings as low as 37 and I keep having to be sent for ecg's but doctors keep telling me I'm grand :S

uberwolf

was down at 34 or so, checked before even raising my head from the pillow in the morning. Recorded it frequently, but completely disregarded its usefulness as a means of assessing recovery to my lasting regret as I overtrained badly.

If checking by hand, be careful of the "tub thump". Count it as one, not two beats

jwshooter

its a bad day when you dont learn some thing !.

il try it in the morning . will report then .

interesting

blorg

My max is 204, IIRC I have seen 35 first thing in the morning.

gimmeaminute

My pb is 38. If you can get it below 30 you want to easy back on the EPO.

jwshooter

blorg wrote: »

My max is 204, IIRC I have seen 35 first thing in the morning.

where and what were you at when it hit 204 .if print able

Someone else

The max heartbeat also depends on your age.....

normally (220 - your age) is your max allowed....

so I'm 40 so my max should be about 180 started rtecording it late last year while fit and only got to 175 while climbing Molls gap from the kilarney side on my bike in august

resting is about 58 during the day on the last visit to the DR

billy.fish

jwshooter wrote: »

where and what were you at when it hit 204 .if print able

Have had athletes hit over 225 in the lab during maximal tests.

Issue is at what percentage of HR you work at for a given % of Vo2, but thats for another post

Low HR's are great, but a tendency to drop the top end will come with lowering HR also.

FWIW :Low hr :42 bpm, max 187. LT2/OBLA/Threshold/Whatever you call it @ 176bpm

C'est moi.

uberwolf

Someone else wrote: »

The max heartbeat also depends on your age.....

normally (220 - your age) is your max allowed....

so I'm 40 so my max should be about 180

that is a very rough rule of thumb afaik.

here is the first article I found when I googled it

I've strayed a few beats north of 200 as well. Looking down as I crossed the line on a sprint (christmas star, it was an imaginary line on a winter club spin )

blorg

jwshooter wrote: »

where and what were you at when it hit 204 .if print able

Sprint uphill finish in a club league race I won. I am pretty sure it was genuine. I got to 200 before (my previous max) in a race I came second.

Someone else

uberwolf wrote: »

that is a very rough rule of thumb afaik.

here is the first article I found when I googled it

I've strayed a few beats north of 200 as well. Looking down as I crossed the line on a sprint (christmas star, it was an imaginary line on a winter club spin )

OK so I should have said roughly like the BMI rubbish thats out there !!!

Obviously it does not apply to everyone if your fit and the guy up the road is not :rolleyes:

el tel

My resting is 48bpm and max is 200bpm. When I was in my late teens it was 55 bpm at rest but I could reach 225 in circuit training. Maxing out felt really bad though, like my head was going to float off my body :eek:

uberwolf

Someone else wrote: »

OK so I should have said roughly like the BMI rubbish thats out there !!!

that's probably a very good parallel. Guidelines, but you wouldn't be basing your training around the zones it provided you!

IM0

Someone else wrote: »

The max heartbeat also depends on your age.....

normally (220 - your age) is your max allowed....

also 200max and I have seen 32-34 (at the end of a rest week) on my waking hrm usually 36-38 though (in season training)

Billy Whizz

Personally I find that morning heart rate alone isn't the best indicator of underlying fatigue.

I prefer to first of all take it lying down and then stand up, leave it a minute and then take heart rate again. A difference of <15bpm indicates freshness for me, anything >30bpm and I know I need a rest day.

Hungrycol

I went for a full cardio workup last November and asked my cardiologist what my max HR was. He recommended 220-age as a benchmark but couldn't tell me at what stage to say stop if it gets to a certain level. Said my heart could deal with the stresses of exercise. Essentially you could guess your max HR by how you feel when very exerted but it wouldn't be the max after which your heart would stop!

Anyway I pay less heed to max HR and more recovery. Thinking that fitness can be best measured by how fast you recover, how fast your HR returns from exertion to normal. I have also noticed that the fitter you get the more difficult it become to get get your HR up.

(BTW, I lasted 14 mins on the stress test )

blorg

Max HR doesn't mean anything other than a personal metric for you to set zones, etc. Comparisons with other people's max are certainly irrelevant. Someone else may have a lower max HR but a larger heart that pushes more blood per stroke, for example.

biker_joe

Billy Whizz wrote: »

Personally I find that morning heart rate alone isn't the best indicator of underlying fatigue.

I prefer to first of all take it lying down and then stand up, leave it a minute and then take heart rate again. A difference of <15bpm indicates freshness for me, anything >30bpm and I know I need a rest day.

Do you actuall take a day off Billy ????
Mine is between 38 - 42 at the minute depending on what I have done the day before.
But worth looking at Joe Friel's bit about "Morning Warnings" you rate your
RHR -/+ % with Sleep, Fatigue, Stress, and Muscle Soreness each morning..
so you score each .. and a combination of high scores means train lightly or not at all ....

Biker Joe

biker_joe

here's a real example ... from Jan last year ..... and over cooking !!!



Mod may want to down size this !!

biker Joe

Billy Whizz

biker_joe wrote: »

Do you actuall take a day off Billy ????
Mine is between 38 - 42 at the minute depending on what I have done the day before.
But worth looking at Joe Friel's bit about "Morning Warnings" you rate your
RHR -/+ % with Sleep, Fatigue, Stress, and Muscle Soreness each morning..
so you score each .. and a combination of high scores means train lightly or not at all ....

Biker Joe

By rest day I mean 1hr recovery on the rollers...

Friel's warnings are good, there's also something called a DALDA (Daily Analyses of Life Demands for Athletes) questionnaire which goes into a bit more depth.

Peterx

How fast your bpm returns to a low level after strenuous exercise is a good indicator of fitness too. On the roadbike freewheeling on the descents after a hard fast climb is a good time to measure this.
Checking the data might be safer on the computer after though!

biker_joe

Billy Whizz wrote: »

By rest day I mean 1hr recovery on the rollers...

Friel's warnings are good, there's also something called a DALDA (Daily Analyses of Life Demands for Athletes) questionnaire which goes into a bit more depth.

yea, DALDA grand if had time to fill it in each morning.... the Friel one is quick to fill in, grand for us part-timers .....

Biker Joe

Billy Whizz

biker_joe wrote: »

yea, DALDA grand if had time to fill it in each morning.... the Friel one is quick to fill in, grand for us part-timers .....

Biker Joe

Quiet you...