Your heart rate is a basic tool for understanding your current fitness and health level. In order to use your heart rate effectively, it is important to understand what is normal, and when it indicates a potential problem. Your resting heart rate, your age-predicted maximum heart rate and your target heart rate zones are the components necessary to understanding your normal heart rate.
Resting Heart Rate
Your baseline for determining your normal heart rate is your resting heart rate. For best results, this should be tested after at least 5 minutes of sitting quietly, at rest. For an adult male, a normal resting heart ranges from 60 to 100 beats per minute. A resting heart rate that is consistently above 100 beats per minute indicates tachycardia. A consistent reading below 60 beats per minute indicates bradycardia. Both of these conditions can be indicators of an underlying pathology and should be evaluated by a physician.
Factors Affecting Heart Rate
Your resting heart rate can be affected by many different factors. For this reason, it is important to test it several times in order to get a consistent reading. Highly trained aerobic endurance athletes can often show a resting heart rate as low as 50 beats per minute without any underlying pathology; due to their training, their hearts become more efficient in delivering blood to the body and can beat much more slowly at rest than untrained individuals. Your mood, your body position and whether or not you have consumed any caffeine can all alter your resting heart rate.
Maximum Heart Rate Based on Age
Your maximum heart rate is the next value you need to determine. The formula is to subtract your age from 220. For a 20-year-old male, that would give you a maximum heart rate of 200 beats per minute. For a 53-year-old male, that would yield a maximum heart rate of 167 beats per minute.
Target Heart Rates for Aerobic Training
Your body has three systems that provide it with energy while exercising. The first of these systems is aerobic--it uses oxygen and can provide energy for activities that are low to moderate intensity for long periods of time. The normal heart rate for the aerobic activity zone is 70 to 80 percent of your maximum heart rate. If you are our hypothetical 20-year-old, that would be 158 to 172 beats per minute. For a 53-year-old male, that would be 135 to 146 beats per minute.
Target Heart Rates for Anaerobic Training
Your body's two anaerobic energy systems provide energy for brief periods of intense activity. In terms of heart rate, the anaerobic threshold is at 80 to 90 percent of your heart rate maximum. If you are 20 years old, that is a range of 172 to 186 beats per minute. If you are 53, that range is 146 to 156 beats per minute.
