Anyway I forced myself out on a run last week and I was very pleased I did, I felt great afterwards - there is nothing like a good run to blow the cobwebs out.
The Beets Blu Heart Monitor is very easy to use - I switched the bluetooth on on my iPhone 6 and opened my Runkeeper App and immediately it all linked together.
The heart monitor fit snuggly and comfortably round my chest and was discreet underneath my top. I started running...
Every ten minutes the app would tell me my running speed and distance and now it also told me my heart rate and what percentage I was running at (80-90% which I was pleased about). I found this motivated me to push myself harder and try to continue to run at the same pace if not harder (thankfully I wasnt on a long run)!
Monitoring your heart rate while exercising used to be just for serious athletes however lots of people use them nowadays in gym classes such as spinning or aerobics or while just running whether on a treadmill or outside. The heart rate provides a fair measurement of how your cardio-respiratory system is working - the harder the workout, the higher your heart rate will be, however the fitter you are, the lower the heart rate.
There are 5 different heart rate zones:
1. 50%-60%, 104-114 bpm - A comfortable easy zone, good for warm up and cool down, improves overall health and metabolic rate.
2. 60%-70%, 114-143 bpm - An average effort, light sweating, easy to still maintain a conversation, improves basic endurance and helps recovery.
3. 70%-80%, 133-152 bpm - An above average effort, moderate sweating, slight muscle fatigue, improves aerobic fitness.
4. 80%-90%, 152-171 bpm - A hard effort, heavy breathing, increases maximum performance capacity.
5. 90%-100%, 171-190 bpm - As hard as you can go and exhausting, this is what I want to aim for when I sprint at the end of my runs!!
If you want to try heart rate training properly it is important to find out your maximum heart rate and a simple way to do this is use this equation:
208 - (0.7 x your age)
For me that would be 208 - (0.7 x 35) = 183.5. Ideally I would like to train at 70%-85% of this which is between 128.5 and 156 bpm. As always use your common sense though and if you are too exhausted and feel like you are about to collapse - STOP!
As for me, I will continue to monitor when I run to see how I improve my fitness and also as I said I find it works as a great motivator….I just need to get running again….
Happy heart rate monitoring :-)
Beets Blu Heart Rate Monitor on Amazon
Beets Blu
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