The beats your heart makes during the day are not constant. It is easy to notice that it does less when you are at rest and speeds up when you are walking or running, until it increases a lot the more you exert yourself.
One doubt you may have, especially when you have been running for not long, is “Won’t it hurt me to run? Won’t it hurt my heart?” After all, you feel it accelerates so much and the question you ask yourself is legitimate. Therefore, it is equally fair to try to give you an answer, if only to put your mind at ease.
The magic formula
To find out what is the threshold beyond which it is best for your heart not to push itself there is a very simple formula: you have to subtract your age from 220, obtaining (with some approximation) your maximum heart rate. For example, if you are 40 years old, your HRmax is 180 bpm (that is, beats per minute). Every minute your heart makes, under stress, 180 beats. As you can easily see, the older you get, the higher the number you subtract from 220 and thus the lower the maximum heart rate. In other words, at age 20 you have a significantly higher FCmax than at age 60, as is also easily expected.
Effort intensity
Why is it important to know this value in relation to physical activity? For several reasons: the first is undoubtedly for your health; the second is that heart rate is directly proportional to physical exertion. The higher it is, the higher the heart rate. Consequently, the type of effort you make is always placed in relation to your heart rate. Let me explain: if your training schedule calls for moderate-intensity running, it means that your average HR should be between 50 and 70 percent of your FCmax. Going back to the initial example then, if your HRmax is 180bpm, during moderate exercise your average HR should be between 90 and 126bpm.
On the other hand, if high-intensity training is planned, HR will rise to values between 70 and 85 percent of your FCmax, that is, between 126 and 153 bpm.
The highest and the lowest
Now that you know how to calculate your FCmax you will also question whether there is a minimum. Of course it does, and it is called resting heart rate. This is defined as the number of beats per minute of a subject who is at rest, i.e., seated and who has not engaged in physical activity for a certain amount of time before the survey. Not surprisingly, resting frequency is normally measured by sitting on the edge of the bed after a night of deep rest.
How to calculate it? The simplest method is to count the pulse on the wrist or neck over a 15-second period and then multiply the resulting number by 4 times (since a minute consists of 15 seconds times 4 times), but for the past few years any sportwatch can calculate the heart rate with good accuracy, and it does so continuously, while also reporting any abnormalities that may cause concern.
Why is it important to know her?
Beyond the personal scruple that we should all have-namely, that of preserving as intact as possible one of our most important organs (I would also say the only one truly indispensable for living), knowing your maximum heart rate and, consequently, your average and indicative ones under moderate exertion and under intense exertion, allows you to adapt the type of exercise you do so as not to overstress your physique but also not to make your training futile.
What did I say? Yes, you heard right: that your heart rate increases during physical activity is perfectly normal, and if it did not, it would mean that you were not training efficiently in a way that would achieve a discernible result.
Knowledge of these parameters also makes you realize that when you exceed them you are subjecting your body to an effort that over-exhausts it, negating the benefit of the workout.
On the other hand, if you want to get appreciable results from physical activity, you must aim to work your body in a zone away from the minimum heart rate and closer and closer to 85 percent, but in a way that does not overwork you.
In fact, this is the point of the repetitions and speed work that you should include among your workouts: training at or even above threshold is meant to get your heart used to staying on certain beats-per-minute regimens while keeping your effort under control. In fact, the more you accustom the heart to working under stress, the lighter the effort it will make.
This method of calculation, as anticipated, is approximate but useful. Instead, to obtain more precise results, you must resort to more in-depth examinations guided by competent personnel.
When in doubt, it is still best to know what one’s threshold is, to measure any effort against it. And getting better, always.
(Main image credits: Luckybusiness on DepositPhotos.com – Via Adventure)