Your maximum heart rate (MHR) is the highest pulse rate you can achieve during an all-out effort. According to experts at Montana State University, your MHR declines about one beat a year after the age of 15, and the best way to estimate it is by subtracting your age from 220. But this will only be an estimate, because MHR varies widely from person to person.
What Your Heart Rate Tells You
Your heart rate is a good indicator of what kind of physical condition you are in. If you are inactive, your resting pulse rate will be higher than the resting pulse rate of someone who works out regularly. According to the University of Maryland Medical Center, that's because people who exercise have stronger hearts that are capable of pumping a greater volume of blood with each stroke. As a result, their hearts don't have to beat as often.
Building a Better Heart Rate
Sedentary people, when they start to exercise, find that their heart rate climbs rapidly and that they become out of breath quickly. That rapid heart rate, according to researchers at Washington University, indicates that your body is struggling to deliver enough oxygen to working muscles. (That also explains the gasping for air.) Your response should be to slow down and do less-strenuous exercise until your heart becomes stronger.
Increasing Heart Rate Can Also Decrease It
According to University of New Mexico researcher Dr. Len Kravitz, regularly exercising will decrease your resting heart rate by five to 25 beats per minute. Although exercise won't increase your MHR, it will allow you to exercise more comfortably at increasing levels of intensity. For instance, when you start a regular exercise routine, your heart rate might rise to 125 beats per minute (BPM) during a walk. After exercising regularly, however, you may find that your heart beats at only 100 BPM during that walk, or that you are able to jog without exceeding 125 BPM.
Using Heart Rate to Measure Effort
People can use their heart rate to determine if they are exercising hard enough. If you are exercising at too low of a heart rate, you will not be gaining health benefits, and if you are exercising at too high of a heart rate, you will quickly become exhausted. According to the National Institutes of Health, moderate intensity exercise, such as walking, is between 60 percent and 70 percent of your MHR, and vigorous intensity exercise, such as jogging, is 70 percent to 90 percent of your MHR.
Benefits of Exercise
According to Kravitz, the greatest health benefits come from vigorous exercise. Regular exercise of any type helps prevent and manage hypertension (high blood pressure), diabetes, osteoporosis, obesity, cancer and depression, but vigorous exercise provides greater "cardioprotective benefits," Kravitz says. But the NIH recommends that people starting an exercise program begin with moderate exercise.
Measure Your Improvement
Rice University experts say heart rate monitors will show when you are getting fitter. Say, for instance, you run a mile in nine minutes at the beginning of an exercise program and your heart rate averages 145 BPM. As you improve with more exercise, you should see either your heart rate decline while running that nine-minute mile, or you should see your time for that mile decline when you run it at 145 BPM.
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