Heart rate as an effort measurement

thx1138

SanguineSteve wrote: »

Have you tried a different HR monitor?

120 sounds crazy low.

I've always used the 220 - Age as a guide, but i'm on the high side. Resting usually 70ish, highest i've seen for me was 206bpm on a particularly savage climb.

Yes, I've tried the old infallible HR monitor. Two fingers on the carotid, six seconds, multiply by ten.

I am finding though that others seem to have this 'problem' -- if that's what it is. So I think I'm pretty much resigned to never having a racing heart. Maybe that's a good thing? I hope so.

stephen77

Your heart is probably stronger from all the exercise you do, your clean diet has kept your arteries free from clogging up. Thus it does not have to do as many pumps, as each pump gets more blood around your body. Hence your lower heart rate.


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artbaron

I think to an extent it's different for different people. I'm a bit younger than the OP and my resting rate is about 44 and after a brisk four mile walk with 400 foot of climbing it's just under 60. But I doubt I could run to the end of the garden and back without gasping for breath. I do a fair amount of walking, about 7 miles a day with half of that up steep hills, but as for being considered 'fit'... not so much.

Lizling

artbaron wrote: »

I think to an extent it's different for different people. I'm a bit younger than the OP and my resting rate is about 44 and after a brisk four mile walk with 400 foot of climbing it's just under 60. But I doubt I could run to the end of the garden and back without gasping for breath. I do a fair amount of walking, about 7 miles a day with half of that up steep hills, but as for being considered 'fit'... not so much.

Heart rates are different for different people of course, but maximum heart rate has almost nothing to do with fitness. It is what it is and it declines with age, unlike resting heart rates, which do tend to drop as fitness increases.

Lizling

thx1138 wrote: »

Perhaps it's folly to think so but it seems to me that if I can really push myself alone then I will develop extreme mental toughness.

I don't mean to be rude at all, but I think it's worth considering the possibility that you haven't developed quite that level of toughness yet. You've said yourself ' I never feel like I'm giving a 10 effort' and that you haven't recaptured that proper knackeredness feeling you used to get from track intervals.

That leaves us with only 2 possible scenarios, as far as I can see

1) You are a medical outlier in that you have an exceptionally low maximum HR and also in that even working at 100% effort, your heart and breathing are basically ok (which forces me to ask in what way is it a maximum effort).

2) You could actually run quite a lot harder than you think you can.


Option 3 would have been a mistake in measuring the 120 max, but that's been ruled out.

Any chance you could go and run a race with a heart monitor on? A 5k would be ideal.

terra_ferma

My gym buddy has a very high pulse rate, never lower than 100 even when resting (she's seen a specialist etc etc).
We stopped comparing heart rates on the running machine because hers was getting very high very quickly and mine was much lower. It's not a good way of measuring effort, because it would look like she's working out much harder than I do, but she's not (and she's not much fitter in general).

Lizling

terra_ferma wrote: »

My gym buddy has a very high pulse rate, never lower than 100 even when resting (she's seen a specialist etc etc).
We stopped comparing heart rates on the running machine because hers was getting very high very quickly and mine was much lower. It's not a good way of measuring effort, because it would look like she's working out much harder than I do, but she's not (and she's not much fitter in general).

You're comparing the wrong thing. It's the % of max heart rate you should be looking at to measure effort, not simply the heart rate.

E.g. if she is working at 150 bpm and has a max of 200, she's at 75% of max. If you're working at 140 but have a max of 180, you're at 78% so you'd be working harder even though your heart rate is lower than hers.

thx1138

Lizling wrote: »

I don't mean to be rude at all, but I think it's worth considering the possibility that you haven't developed quite that level of toughness yet. You've said yourself ' I never feel like I'm giving a 10 effort' and that you haven't recaptured that proper knackeredness feeling you used to get from track intervals.

That leaves us with only 2 possible scenarios, as far as I can see

1) You are a medical outlier in that you have an exceptionally low maximum HR and also in that even working at 100% effort, your heart and breathing are basically ok (which forces me to ask in what way is it a maximum effort).

2) You could actually run quite a lot harder than you think you can.


Option 3 would have been a mistake in measuring the 120 max, but that's been ruled out.

Any chance you could go and run a race with a heart monitor on? A 5k would be ideal.

Here's the thing though, I'm doing the Insanity workout and I am not dogging it either. I keep up with Shaun T and his crew throughout most of the routines. Whenever I check my heart rate it's always low. The highest it's gotten with Insanity is 100. So if Insanity doesn't do it what will?

I've checked at the end if a 10,000 meter time trial I did on the track at 49.43, which is my latter day PB. Same story. The weird thing is I can't find anything definitive. Your ideas and the theories of some of the other posters sound good, but again, they're just theories. Anyway, I do appreciate it and suspect the truth lies in these posts somewhere.