There are many benefits to running, including the improvement of cardiovascular health and the ability to efficiently burn calories and help maintain a healthy body fat percentage. To make your workouts efficient, you need to work out at an intensity that causes your heart rate to stay in a specified training zone. Calculate your personal target training zone and then analyze your heart rate during workouts to ensure you're exercising at the right intensity.
Identification
When you run, you want to keep your heart rate within its target heart rate range, which is 70 to 85 percent of your personal maximum heart rate. Training in your target heart rate zone ensures that you receive the cardiovascular health benefits of your exercise sessions. According to the Mayo Clinic, to calculate your training heart rate zone, first subtract your age from 220, which will give you your maximum heart rate. Multiply that number by both .7 and .85, which will give you the range at which you should maintain your heart rate while running.
Significance
The intensity at which you run makes an impact on the amount of oxygen necessary and the calories burned during your running sessions. Too low-intensity exercising will adversely affect the health benefits and make your workouts inefficient. Too high-intensity exercising doesn't increase benefits and increases the chances of injury.
Other Training Zones
If you are in extremely poor health or are just starting a running program, exercise within a moderate activity zone, which is 50 to 60 percent of your maximum heart rate. You can calculate this range by multiplying your maximum heart rate by .5 and .6. If you would like to incorporate high-performance training so that you can handle short periods of high-intensity bouts, spend some time during your workout training at an anaerobic threshold training zone, which is 80 to 90 percent of your maximum heart rate and can be calculated by multiplying your maximum heart rate by .8 and .9.
Monitoring During Exercise
There are multiple ways to monitor your heart rate while you're running. The most accurate way to measure your heart rate is to purchase a heart rate monitor. They can be purchased for under $100 as of 2010 and involve wearing a strip that straps around your chest, which then reads your heart rate and sends the data to a wristwatch for easy monitoring. If you're unable to purchase a heart rate monitor, another way to measure whether you're exercising at an appropriate intensity is to use the talk test. Imagine that you have someone running with you. Working out at an appropriate intensity would allow you to talk, but holding a full conversation would be difficult.
Medical Considerations
Those who have had a history of heart or lung issues should consult a medical professional prior to running. Your individual circumstances may call for different heart rate rules.
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