A heart rate monitor is a great tool for gauging the intensity of our workout. Beginning exercisers can use heart rate monitors to ensure that workout intensity is high enough to reap the maximum benefits. More advanced exercisers can use a heart rate monitor to determine the heart rate during specific types of workouts.
Benefits of Heart Rate Monitors for Beginning Exercisers
For those starting an exercise program, knowing appropriate exercise intensity can be difficult. Beginners can benefit from using a heart rate monitor to ensure that they are exercising at the correct intensity. Exercising at an intensity that is too low does not produce the desired fitness effects, while high intensity exercising can lead to injury, soreness and burnout for those just starting their fitness journey.
Advanced Athletes and Heart Rate Monitors
Heart rate is a great way to measure the intensity of a workout. Those involved in aerobic, endurance sports often need a consistent way to measure the intensity of various workouts and heart rate monitors fit that requirement. Higher intensity workouts can be used for adaptation of specific physiological processes and to increase performance.
Heart Rate Monitor Chest Strap
Most heart rate monitors require the use of a chest strap. This chest strap usually has two conductive areas used by the monitor to measure heart rate. In order to get the best heart rate readings, it is recommended that a specially made gel be used to make the best surface contact with the skin. Once the user begins perspiring, skin contact is usually not a problem. Some exercise equipment like treadmills and elliptical machines will detect the signal from chest straps and display heart rate without the use of the accompanying wristwatch.
Heart Rate Monitor Features
The wristwatch portion of most heart rate monitors vary considerably in their features. The simplest devices simply display current heart rate. Other features often include calculations for calories burned, exercise zone, or percentage of maximum heart rate. The more expensive devices include some mechanism for downloading heart rate data onto a computer or the Internet for further study.
Beginning exercisers can get by with a simple device that displays only heart rate. Those wanting to lose weight may prefer a device that displays calories burned. Advanced athletes performing complex workouts should look for features including the display and alarming of specific heart rate zones and if so inclined, they may want the ability to download data onto a computer for logging or analysis purposes.
Scott Hidalgo - Scott Hidalgo is a software engineer for a law enforcement government agency in New Mexico. He is also a certified personal trainer who ...
