Heart Rate

Heart Rate and Exercise The leading cause of death in America is cardiovascular disease. This particular disease was responsible for 960,000 deaths in this country last year, accounting for 41.5% of all deaths. Studies have shown that exercise reduces the risk of heart disease. Indeed, people who are less fit have between a thirty and fifty percent greater risk for the development of high blood pressure. (Just Move, PG 1) Unfortunately fifty-four percent of all Americans are overweight and only ten percent follow a regular exercise regimen.

(Ask Yahoo, Pg 1) Currently only twenty-two percent of all Americans get enough exercise to protect their hearts. Fifty-three percent get some exercise, but nowhere near enough to cut down their probabilities of disease and twenty-five percent are not active at all. (Just Move, Pg 1) Numerous studies have shown throughout the years that exercise and physical fitness lowers the heart disease risk even in those who have other health problems such as high blood pressure or high blood cholesterol.

In addition to exercise, the health conscious individual will also make an attempt to avoid things such as cigarette smoke, high blood pressure and high cholesterol. (Just Move, Pg 2) The statistics are clear. To protect oneself from harmful cardiovascular diseases and ailments, it is imperative to be involved in regular exercise that allows the heart rate to climb to a level which is contusive to fitness.

The monitoring of one's heart rate allows an individual to know if the exercise that he or she is involved in is doing what it is supposed to do. Sweat during a workout is not an indicator of the value of the workout, understanding the heart rate is. Following is a breakdown of the different types of heart rates and why they are important to fitness and cardiovascular health. First, the maximum heart rate is the highest number of times an individual's heart can contract in one minute.

(Heart Rate, pg 1) To calculate the maximum heart rate of an individual, subtract the age of the individual from 220. The answer to this simple mathematical problem is the maximum heart rate. This particular number is important because it helps to define what one's training heart rate should be. (Ask Yahoo, Pg 1) Theoretically, one should participate in vigorous aerobic activities three to four times a week for between thirty and sixty minutes. (Just Move, Pg 1) During this training regimen, the focus is to achieve a target heart rate during exercise.

The target heart rate will be determined by two things. First what an individual hopes to accomplish through exercise such as losing weight or training for a race; and second what the person's maximum heart rate is. The target heart rate is generally between fifty and seventy-five percent of the maximum heart rate. As such, this is the ideal heart rate for a given individual during aerobic exercise. (Ask Yahoo, Pg 1) second important heart rate to understand is the recovery heart rate.

Essentially the recovery heart rate is the rate which the body will decrease to after an exercise session. In other words if a person exercises for thirty minutes at a rate of 155 beats per minute, after the person stops exercising the speed at which the heart rate slows down will be measured. Generally a rate will be taken two minutes after the individual stops exercising. If the person is somewhat fit, the rate might drop down to 95 beats per minute after a two-minute rest period.

This would be a good drop. (Heart Rate, Pg 1) The recovery heart rate, much like the maximum heart rate and the target heart rate, is going to be different for every individual. As a result the timeframe in which a person's heart rate drops back to a resting heart rate is going to be different for every person. The resting heart rate is the number of heart beats per minute in a person at rest. The resting heart rate indicates one's basic fitness level.

In other words, the more well-conditioned body requires less effort and fewer beats per minute to pump blood throughout the body. (Heart Rate, pg 1) The heart rate reserve is important because it determines one's potential training rate. This may be determined by identifying the difference between one's maximum heart rate and one's resting heart rate. If the maximum heart rate is 169 beats per minute and the resting heart rate is 63 beats per minute, the heart rate.