How valid is heart rate monitoring on aerobic exercise machines?
October 31, 2009 by Peter Fuller
Filed under Aerobic Exercise
I am 51, people think I look younger. I’m in good shape but according to the aerobic exercise machines at the gym, I’m supposed to keep my heart rate under 150 or something. I can work a lot harder but my heart rate goes up into the red zone. Its seems pretty arbitrary to me. Any advice?
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My guess is, the machines are just giving out an approximate number and it’s not 100% accurate. The only way to find out your true maximum heart rate is to do a stress test on a treadmill at the doctor’s office while hooked up to an ekg. Then once u have that figure, u can work the numbers in.
Or…
Do what I did. I purchased a heart rate monitor and ran as fast as I could, holding the effort for at least one minute. Mine came out to 212bpm. So, 75% of that would put me at 159bpm and 85% would be 180bpm.