i think GF asked that question due to his lack of understanding of the significance of resting heart rate. the heart is a big piece of muscles. this piece of muscles only job is to pump blood. the blood is pumped to every corner of the body so other muscles and cells can function and make you stay alive. (pretty darn important a muscle) like any other muscles, the heart can be trained. if you make it work hard, it will get stronger and can pump more blood on every stroke. and to make it work hard, you cannot sit in the couch and watch tv, instead, you need to go out and exercise. only with exercise would the heart do more work and strengthen itself. anyway, so how strong the heart is is an indication of how fit you are. how does tha relate to resting heart rate? if you are resting, that's the state in which there is very little physical exercise being done. all the heart need to do is to pump enough blood to maintain the basic body operation. this is a reference level of output. for normal human being, the heart usually need to pump around 70 times/min worth of blood to maintain this operation. but for stronger heart/fitter people, the heart can pump as much blood in less strokes, thus fitter people have lower resting heart rate. a more efficient heart also means that at your maximum heart rate (approx 230-your age) the totally amount of blood pumped is higher and as a result your body's output power is higher.
Yeap, I agree with Kwun. Anyway for resting heart beat, the most accurate is to do it first thing in the morning. That is immediately after you wake up, don't even get out of bed and brush teeth, measure it while you are still in bed. .....this is not cheating but the correct way to measure.
i had to be hospitalized last weekend and got my appendix taken out and the messured my pulse, because i was in bed for a while it was steady between in the moring, 43 to 47 in the afternoon not too bad!
modius, i heard the most accurate time is just "before" you wake up in the morning. while i was taking my resting heart rate, i find that slowing down my breathing would slow down the heart rate. is that cheating?
I would say IMHO Kwun, that's not cheating because after all, your rest heartrate is your rest heartrate. If by lowering your breathing, you're still fully at rest, it's not cheating. If you can suddenly be still alive and stop your heartbeats from beating at all for one whole minute, also not cheating hehe, still at rest what? A
Erm I'm not that fit, my resting heart rate is 77 bpm, but I don't blame myself, I don't drink much water and I eat lots of candy and chips. Surprisingly, I'm not fat at all, even though I don't get enough nutrition and exercise. I'm really surprised at the number of super fit people there are on this board! Everyone is like around 50 and under... haha I suck..
u sure? but then my heart rate would go from about 70 down to about 50s if i breath slowly... @@" i swear my cardio's messed up for some reason...
I was actually more in a joking mode in my last post. But in all seriousness, no, I'm not 100% sure about whether slowing your breath down is still your accurate measurement of rest heartrate. However, I do believe that given that your fitness is measured by your heart's ability to pump all the necessary amount of blood to all parts of your body in as little effort as possible, that means that if you can slow down your breathing and still don't feel like you're out of breath and the heart is able to pump blood to all parts of your body at that slower heart rate, then I still think it is an actual indication of your fitness based on your resting heartrate.
IMO i don't think abnormal behavior during a test would validate a steady state measurement. To obtain a more reasonable average heart rate, try measuring it for 2 or 3 minutes instead 1. (I dare you guys hold your breath this long ) If the bpm decreases with every minute, then take the lower bpm measurement. If the bpm is all over the place, average them out in bpm.
Decreased Hearbeat... hehe... dug up this form cuz i just realized that my heartbeat has DECREASED!! last time posted I fell under the 70s section after waking up... now it's around 50something (actually... mite be 40something... but average is just about 50)... hehe... secret of decreasing heartrate? play A LOT of badminton
Wow, somehow I missed this thread during the first time. normal pulse rate is between 60-90 beats per minute. fitness, so I've heard is measured by the time it takes for your heart rate to go down to it's normal resting rate. I don't think you can measure fitness by the pulse rate i.e. a pulse of 40 doesn't mean you are fitter than when your pulse is 45 or 50. A low pulse means you are doing vigourous exercise regularly. If you got a pulse of less than 40, I'd be a bit concerned. I once knew a person(in her 20's) who thought she was really fit because her pulse was low. In fact, from the electrical tracings of her heart, she actually had a problem with the electrical conducting system of her heart. She actually had to have a heart pacemaker inserted to prevent sudden death.
ouch... that's gotta suck... owell.. i kno for sure I've got no problems with my heart... cuz I've alreadi had one of those done ^^" so... as for your method of how fitness is measured... it applies for me as well... after getting more fit... the time it takes to return heartbeat to normal level decreases as well!! I've heard a theory of y people think that fitness can be measured by heartbeats/minute. The theory is... the stronger your heart is, the less it needs to beat/minute to get the blood necessary for your body to function. Thus when you're more fit (your heart is more muscular) the less times/min the heart needs to beat to get blood necessary to the body!
Just took a measure w/ the home kit we got here and it reads 59 so that puts me at border line very fit/ above avg. fit. wow, that's surprising considering I am 20% over weight. hmm...
That's true but remember I said a heart rate of 40 doesn't mean super fit compared to somebody with heart rate of 50. There isn't a linear relationship. jwu, if fitness is defined by "time taken to return to normal resting heart rate after exercise", you can still be fit and overweight. See those guys playing American football? They are huge but I reckon they must be really fit. Same with Sumo wrestlers.
happened across this thread while searching for something else. I wouldn't have thought bpm was a direct guide to fitness, just one of the indicators. Surely an individuals bpm will be affected by: the effectiveness of their lungs in getting oxygen into (and CO2 or whatever out of) the bloodstream red blood cell density and oxygen bearing capacity size of the heart chambers and strength of the heart muscles, i.e. how much blood can be pushed around the body per heartbeat health of the arteries and veins (are they clogged up with fat) Does the VO2 max test give a better measure of fitness? Harder to do at home though. P.S. haven't done resting bpm yet, but it was 53 just now at work (a long time ago, before I did so much exercise I think it was in the low 70s)
couldn't it also be that: the average badminton player here is asian, and the average asian is shorter than the average caucasian (of which the average BPM is derived.) Since asians are shorter, there is less distance for the blood to travel and hence the heart feels less resistance. Also, the body has a smaller volume of blood, since the average asian is also thinner. Therefore each beat can push a greater percentage of the required blood given the same strength of the heart. Thus it's not so much fitter as it is more efficient.
Resting heart rate hard to determine! Well, I'm never really resting per se. I'm always either jiggling my legs or shaking my foot or doing something. Call it nervous energy or what, but I hardly ever sit completely still. So my mostly resting heartrate works out to be about 70. Hey, don't you start to get brain damage after like 2 minutes of no oxygen to your head? Would that help with holding your breath longer? .w.
Im quite content to have my resting heart rate around 60. Good not to pump blood like a locamotive. Also good to have heart beat once in a while. Hey, I dont smoke, dont drink, exercise a lot, am shorter than most asians player soccer and badminton. I've never put much faith in the resting heart rate... Weasel <-- I call it Attention Dissorder. I know microwave popcorn that has less potential energy than you!
Using RHR for training Agreed, this is slightly off-topic, but it does adhere to the whole heart rate-fitness idea. There is a formula devised to work out the ideal target heart rate for endurance and speed work using the resting heart rate. If the resting heart rate is an indicator of fitness level, how do we know when to stop pushing the target heart rate as we get fitter (surely it can't just keep increasing)? If RHR isn't an indicator of fitness, how do we know whether or not we are doing enough in training? I think the overload principle is too vague, because we sometimes feel different on certain days, and we think we are overloading when we are not. Aleik.
