Do you know yours?

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Do you know yours?

I got asked a question the other week

about heart rate monitors and whether / if  / how they should use their FitBit / Apple Watch / Phone to help with their workouts.

Now, it – of course – depends on your goals

For endurance style goals, you may want to track what heart rate training zone you are in to help ensure you keep a steady pace throughout and don’t burnout early on (and to track your fitness of course).

But given the majority of the ladies we work with at Fruci Fit want to get fit, lose weight, and tone up…

Does it have any use here?

Maybe….

why?

Well, 

We all know the scales won’t always move in the right direction, right?

so this is why we teach a habit based approach at Fruci Fit.

If you do the things you know you need to do you will get the results you want.

and if you get results?

It is a win for everyone.

For us as coaches at Fruci Fit

seeing and feeling the excitement when a client goes skiing for the first time in years…

can get up and down from the floor to play with their grandkids..

Fits back into their wardrobe full of clothes they love..

I could go on..

So how does heart rate fit into this?

Well, two ways:

1) Resting heart rate:

Your resting heart rate is your heart rate at rest (surprise) 

You can calculate this first thing in the morning by:

counting your heart beats in 15 seconds then multiply by 4 (you can use an app or your watch too)

This tells you how strong and fit your heart is. 

AKA fewer beats, the stronger the heart is as the stroke volume (how much blood your heart pumps around the body per beat) is now higher and that is why it can do it in fewer beats.

Between 50-70 is considered pretty good.

But you could now use this to monitor progress. Is it getting lower over time?

Don’t do this after your morning coffee 😉

2) Maximum heart rate:

Your maximum heart rate is 220 – your age.

For example,  I am basically 32. so 220 – 32 =[ *Matt grabs calculator* ] 188

so my maximum heart rate is 188.

Now I might use this to see how my heart rate is in my workouts.

For example, can I get this to 50-70% of my max heart rate today?

How did I feel?

Did I feel I could push more?

This can give us feedback to know when to push or not.

It could also help motivate some people who like to gamify things a bit more.

Now, that said?

The most important thing is you just DO the workout.

as the best workout in the world is the one you do..

We can talk about it all we want, analyse the best way..

but unless you actually put one foot in front of the other?

You are a spectator …

and when you are in spectator mode,

that is usually when you drop into worrying about what others will think

Or what others are doing. 

So focussed on things we cannot control

that we don’t control what we can.

One thing to remember, 

Is that when doing resistance exercise, heart rate will not be a good reflection of what you are aiming to do.

This is because resistance exercise has the goal of strengthening muscles and certain exercises will do this without getting your heart rate up but

Still providing the benefits like:

→ Helping to build muscle and change your body shape

→ Help you get stronger and make everyday tasks easier

→ Help to eliminate those niggles and aches 

→ Increase bone density 

→ Decrease risk of Type 2 diabetes

I could go on

Matt

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