Heart beat

[Your_Crazy]

How important is it to monitor your heart rate during excercise?

I read a lot of post with everyone posting heart rates. Isn't the old saying you if you can hold a normal conversation with someone then your you should be right around your heart rate.

Originally Posted by Your_Crazy

How important is it to monitor your heart rate during excercise?

I read a lot of post with everyone posting heart rates. Isn't the old saying you if you can hold a normal conversation with someone then your you should be right around your heart rate.

I don't think it is really important to monitor your HR during exercise. Using your perceived exertion on a scale of 1 to 10 should be sufficient. But I use a HR monitor often as I like the quantitative feedback it gives me. Remember, I am a numbers guy and I like to take data and summarize it to create information and use that information to make decisions, in this case about my training and about my progress or lack of it.

Engaging in a physical activity and conversation means that you are probably in your aerobic zone of training. Nothing wrong with that level of exertion for general fitness, but if you want to grow in your fitness, you need to spend time training at higher intensity levels.

[bodyshop20]

when pushing iron i dont monitor, but when cycling for cardio i do.
Cardio i use to burn fat so i like to know in in 80% of max heart rate which is best fat burning rate

[ajarvis]

I personally go by my rate of percieved exertion or whatever it's called lol. Even when I was pregnant I was told not to go by my HR, but some people like to see the actual number. Sometimes I think it'd be neat to see, but honestly I'm just too lazy to track it.

Now if I had something like the Garmin Forerunner I'd track it. I want one soooo bad! Mainly for tracking my distances while out running!