Category: Health

Exercise: Where and How to Start

When you want to get started on an exercise program, how do you know where to start?

That’s the basic question, and most would-be exercisers get it wrong. While they might have a vague idea of where they’d like to end up, they don’t really know how to get there. And sometimes they don’t even know where they want to be. Then they start, stop, start again, get discouraged, and quit.

Today I’ll take you through the general plan you want to use when designing an exercise program. And I’m going to use the most basic of goals and exercises to give you an idea of where to start, where to aim, and how you can modify your program to suit your needs.

 

Determine your goal—

Do the first things first: ask yourself what you want to accomplish. It could be gaining muscle, losing belly fat, or wanting to run or walk a 5K race. Anything. Just make sure you have a good (honest) idea of where you’re starting from. If you’ve never walked or run a 5K, you won’t start your exercise program by charging out on daily 5K walks around your neighborhood. You’ll start with your baseline—the level of fitness you are today, at this time. Not what you wish you were. And then plan your progress from there.

 

Case Study—

I’ll use myself as an example.

It seemed to happen quickly, although it really occurred over the course of six months to a year. I’d been ignoring my exercise program, spending way too much time sitting in a chair in front of my computer writing stories and articles. I’d even given up my nightly calisthenics and walks with my Shetland sheepdog Dolly. (I wish she’d said something to me, although I should have gotten a clue from her plaintive looks.)

Anyway, one day I saw pictures the engineer took of the family, and I nearly gagged. (Actually, I did gag, before I got mad.) There in the picture, staring back at me were my face and chest, but someone else’s arms were attached to my body. Just when did my upper arms go from toned to fat? And when did they acquire that excess skin hanging under them?!

Yee, gads! Without my noticing, my arms had become old and flappy! Clearly I was no longer the toned athlete I once was and still envisioned myself to be. I took a hard look at myself in the bathroom mirror and raised my arm. It waved at me. Ugh! I thought I’d get physically sick in the sink. Instead, I got mad and decided I’d get even. And getting even meant doing some area-specific exercises to get those puppies back in shape!

 

Plan and process—

To get my arms back in shape, I had several options. I could get myself back in the gym and do some arm-specific machine weights or dumbbell lifting. Or I could pick up the dumbbells I have at home more often and use them. Or go back to doing my pushups every night before bed.

I decided on all three, but today I’m just going to show you how I use the pushups to get my arms under control.

Why pushups? Because they’re the easiest, most basic exercise you can do, at home, at your convenience, with no financial expense. And they can be done at pretty much any age, although you might have to modify the position slightly for your age and strength. There’s a reason pushups have been a staple in physical education classes for eons. They work!

 

So how would I start?

First, I wanted to increase my strength a little, so I set out the first night to do one set (yes, just one) of pushups. Because both wrists were damaged during my gymnastics career, I have to do bent knee style pushups. My wrists can’t take a full body load.

Since I was aiming to increase my strength, I did enough pushups to take me to the state of exhaustion, where I couldn’t lower and raise my body. One. More. Time. And that was it. Just one set. To exhaustion. For me, that ended up being around 35 pushups. All-the-way-down and all-the-way-up pushups. Not half-down types, or swayback with tummy touching the ground first technique. Real pushups.

And I tend to slow down when I lower myself to the ground and speed up when I’m returning to the starting position. Why? Because that’s a more optimal way to gain strength and increase muscle size with this particular exercise. It’s called negative (eccentric) loading. But that’s beyond the scope of today’s post. We’ll cover that in a future post.

And then I stand and stretch out my chest and arms. You ALWAYS want to stretch to keep your muscles as healthy and responsive as possible.

The following evening I repeated the pushups, to exhaustion. I ended up making it to the same level, about 35. If I find myself being able to do a lot more, then either something was wrong the night before, or I didn’t really work to exhaustion the first night.

Every night I continue like this. I don’t set a number to achieve, although I do make sure I don’t increase my number more than 10% of the number achieved the night before. (Exercise rule.) If I can do a couple more, I’ll do more. But what usually happens is that it takes at least a week for my body to build up to a comfortable 35, where I notice that it no longer feels like burning, I-just-can’t-pump-out-another-one exhaustion.

After several (3) weeks, I should be up to 40. And I can keep going like this for months, increasing the number of pushups.

 

Modifying your program to meet your needs—

But I have a body issue to consider. My muscle makeup is not average, or normal. I don’t have 50% red, long distance, marathon-type muscles and 50% white, speedy-type muscles. My body is made up mostly of speedy type muscle fibers, which means I can gain muscle strength and size (bulk up) really quickly. And that’s not what my ultimate goal is for my arms.

I want them lean and contoured. Toned. So what now?

I switch my program up. I’ll still use the pushups, but now I’ll perform them a different way.

The first night I’ll do 12 pushups and then rest for 30 seconds. Then I’ll do 12 more pushups and rest for 30 seconds. And I might do them faster, the same speed up as down. I’ll do at least three sets like this, maybe more. A lot more. This way I’m focusing more on tone, the endurance type of muscles that will give my arms a more toned appearance. And in the process, my chest tightens up and lifts those breast muscles so they look a little perkier! Pushups are A+ exercises for chest muscles. (Not a bad payoff!)

That way I can whittle away at the fat, and slim the muscle down to a nice shape. Like a sculptor chiseling away at a hunk of marble or clay.

You can apply this same principle to your legs to strengthen and tone your thighs and outer thighs and calves.

You just need to know what your ultimate goal is and then figure out the steps to get there!

 

NEXT WEEK: We’ll look at walking and how to plan your workout for that activity.

Until then,

Happy pushupping!

Blessings,

 Andrea

May you prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers (3 John 2).

Photos provided by Google Images

How to Determine Your Target Heart Rate Goal

So now you’ve measured and know your resting heart rate and have an idea on how to determine what your target heart rate should be during exercise. (See my post last week http://andreaarthurowan.com/2018/04/25/the-best-way-to-calculate-your-exercise-training-heart-rate/admin/).

Now what?

 

Setting some goals—

This is the exciting part. Where you decide what your exercise goals are. Spend some time thinking about this one. And consider your age, current physical condition, and what type of exercising you would like to do, and will stick with. Do you want to:

 

  • Lose weight?
  • Put on some muscle and have nicely contoured arms and legs?
  • Tone up what you’ve got?
  • Increase your lung capacity and improve your heart function?
  • Maintain your current level of conditioning?
  • Run a 5K, or triathlon?
  • Increase your reaction time and power or speed?
  • Just get stronger?

 

What fitness goal you choose will determine how you exercise, where you exercise, what you do for exercise, and what exercise heart rate you’ll aim for.

 

Conditioning, toning, power, or aerobic capacity—

As a general rule, for general conditioning goals, you will want to exercise at a heart rate level of 50 to 70%.

As we saw last week, for someone my age (60) and resting heart rate of 58, (don’t forget to use that as your base for proper calculations), I would want to exercise at a level that keeps my heart rate between 109 bpm and 129 bpm.

At the lower rate of 109 or even up to 120, I could maintain a reasonable exercise rate—like walking at a 3.0 mph walking rate—for two to three hours, or longer. As long my knees and feet hold out for me.

If, however, I want to work on power and strength, which I sometimes do, (for toning, muscle definition, and muscle power), I’d want to push my heart rate up to a higher level, say 80 to 90% of my heart rate maximum, again with my resting heart rate as a critical factor in the formula.

When I use the 80 to 90% range, and plug those numbers into the formula we covered last week, we arrive at a target heart rate range of 140 to 150. That’s a rate I wouldn’t be able to sustain for an indefinite period of time, though. In fact, I probably wouldn’t try to sustain it more than 20 minutes, if I were hitting a 140 – 150 bpm rate throughout the entire 20 minutes.

I could, however, go longer, if I were ramping my heart rate up and down as I exercised, as sometimes happens when I’m walking on the treadmill and increasing the ramp angle considerably to mimic hiking uphill and then lowering the ramp angle to a slight or flat grade.

 

 Working up to your target level—

But even if you know what your target level should be, you may need to take it slowly and work up to your desired level. If you haven’t exercised for a while, are recovering from an illness, or you’re changing up your exercise program for some reason—because your goals have changed—you’ll want to work up to a level where your heart rate is being stressed a little but not so much that you have a difficult time breathing, feel weak, or can’t maintain that level of exercise for five to ten minutes. Or, after exercising, your heart rate takes longer than it should to come back to normal.

Again, if you’re just starting an exercise program, make sure your doctor is in agreement with what you want to accomplish and gives you the thumbs up on the program you’ve designed. She can also help you design one!

 

Where do you go from here?

I know all of this probably sounds a little—or a lot—vague, but as we progress, we’ll look at more specific exercise goals and see what a training program might look like for you. If you’re already on an exercise program, you might see some ideas here that will help you improve or stress yourself a bit more.

 

I forgot to provide an answer!

A couple of weeks ago, I asked if you knew which athletes typically have the highest VO2 maximums. I promised to give you the answer the following week—and then forgot! Many apologies for my forgetfulness!

The answer is: Cross-country skiers. They have HUGE lung capacities. One reason is the long distances they ski, but it’s also because they’re using nearly all of their bodies when they’re exercising at those long distances. It’s a grueling sport.

 

 What’s coming up?

NEXT WEEK, “Workout Wednesdays” will be on hiatus. I’m heading to Philadelphia this weekend for an intensive writing/editing workshop with the Guideposts editors and eleven other writers; and my younger son graduates from college the following weekend.

I’m trying to take my own advice and live a balanced life!

So I’ll see you back here May 16!

Until next time, keep working on setting your goals!

Blessings,

 Andrea

May you prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers (3 John 2).

Photos courtesy of Google Images

Taking a Postmortemistic View of Life

Have you ever looked at your life postmortemistically?

 

Don’t try looking the word up in a dictionary, because it doesn’t really exist. A Google search will tell you postmortemistically doesn’t match any documents they have in their search engine. But it’s a great word The New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast invented and used in her priceless memoir Can’t we talk about something more PLEASANT?

The back cover describes the book as: “Roz Chast and her parents were practitioners of denial: if you don’t ever think about death, it will never happen. [It’s] the story of an only child watching her parents age well into their nineties and die. In this account, … Chast combines drawings with family photos and documents, chronicling that ‘long good-bye.’”

The story is heartwarming, heart-wrenching, realistic, candid, and laugh-out-loud funny. I loved it, and her.

 

I can relate to Chast: I’m an only child of older parents, sandwiched between still raising children and working while watching a parent slowly die; and now, nine years later, watch another parent still battle—in spite near total blindness, loneliness, depression, and ravaged hearing—to hang onto life at 96, and probably beyond.

As all of this is occurring, and you’re aging too, you start thinking postmortemistically, even if you didn’t know to call it that.

 

 Postmortemistically—a perfect word to describe what goes through your head when you’re cleaning out your parents’ “stuff” or getting rid of their “stuff” after they die.

Chast calls it a “transformative process.” And, indeed, it is. It’s a depressing, destabilizing, and physically and emotionally exhausting process.

She says, “Once you go through that process, you can never look at YOUR stuff in the same way.”

 

 Like—

You acknowledge, even if you’re not a hoarder, that you’re probably a typical consumer who’s accumulated your fair share of stuff. Stuff that, at some point, will probably have to be given away, thrown away, or sold at one of those edifying “Estate Sales” where other people decide your stuff is worth making their stuff.

 

 

And the big life dilemma and question—

 

One day, your kids will have to go through all of your stuff. What will they find worthy of keeping, as a wonderful memory of you and your life?

And that prompts you to wonder whether or not you should start shedding your stuff before your children have to endlessly paw through it to see if there’s anything they might want to make theirs. You know, as heirlooms.

It’s something for all of us to think about no matter what stage of life we’re in. And being a postmortemistic thinker means a dramatic paradigm shift for many of us that requires some brain re-training and habit breaking. Like not heading to the mall every time a favorite department store or boutique has notified you by email of a sale. Just so you can save some money.

 

I started thinking this way about a year ago, as another one of my birthdays (and my mom’s) rolled around, and the end of my life definitely looked a lot closer to me than the beginning. When a lot of my “stuff” started looking more like junk, dust bunny collectors and storage space-gobblers than cherished treasures. And then I started thinking:

I don’t want my kids to have to dig through all of this stuff and try to make sense of it or decide what to do with it. Or, worse yet, argue over who gets it! (Both of them told me they wanted my sports car after I’m gone, right after I got it ten years ago!)

Now I’m regarding all of my belongings and purchases with a postmortemistic mindset. Not morbidly, just thoughtfully. What’s giving me joy and edification right now, definitely will in the future (when my memory is in the toilet), and what’s just taking up space or ordering my life more than it should?

Thinking that way isn’t morbid, although the word has a morbid ring to it.

It’s actually rather refreshing. And freeing.

I hope you’ll give it a go!

 

Next week, I’ll tell you how my postmortemistic paradigm shift is going.

In the meantime, please share how you’ve handled getting rid of or keeping your deceased parents’ stuff. Is it on display, or stored in a box in the attic, with the hopes that one day you’ll have it all neatly displayed in some gorgeous album (or display case) you painstakingly assembled and explained, for everyone to look at?

And if you’re at that point in your life right now, or know someone who is, I highly recommend getting a copy of Roz Chast’s book. At the very least, you’ll be permeated with happiness and relief that you’re not alone, that there are others whose minds, and lives, go through the same contortions yours does during the agonizing goodbye journey.

 

Until next week,

Happy Reading (and thinking postmortemistically)!

Andrea

May you prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers (3 John 2).

 

Photos courtesy of Google Images

The Best Way to Calculate Your Exercise (Training) Heart Rate

Have you ever spent weeks or months exercising following all of the rules of exercise engagement and not made any progress in your training? There may be a reason for that, and it may have to do with how you’re monitoring and setting your exercise heart rate.

 

Last week we looked at the importance of knowing what your resting heart rate is and how it can be an indicator of your heart health. We also discussed what the standard maximum heart rate and exercise heart rate ranges are, the ones you find most often printed on the treadmill or stationary bike at your gym.

 

Then I ended the post by saying that the most common formula is often not the most accurate or best way to determine your exercise heart rate. Today I’m going to tell you why and show you how to get the measurement you need.

 

Exercise heart rate review—

Let’s begin with a short review about what happens to your heart rate during exercise.

Your heart rate usually rises during intense workouts, prolonged long-distance (aerobic) exercise workouts. Your heart’s maximum heart rate is the rate at which your heart is working at its hardest to supply oxygen to your body. In exercise, this is the rate that can only be sustained for several minutes.

Your maximum heart rate is a function of aerobic capacity—the amount of oxygen your body is able to consume, or the heart’s ability to pump oxygenated blood to your muscles. When an exercise physiologist measures it, she’ll write in terms of VO2 max and actually measure the volume of oxygen you move through your lungs during exercise. The more conditioned you are, the higher your VO2 max usually is.

 

As you exercise and your fitness level improves, the body ramps up in efficiency, at metabolism and everything else it does. Your gastric motility improves—the speed and efficiency at which your body digests and moves food through the digestive tract. Your muscles get stronger and more efficient. Your body actually makes more capillaries in which to circulate oxygenated blood to those muscles, and your lungs become better at moving those oxygenated blood cells through the transport system. (Do any of you remember the People Mover ride at Disneyland? It’s like that. The blood cells line up to load the oxygen and then get whisked away to the distribution sites. The movers are filled to capacity, rather than moving out partially loaded.)

 

Knowing what your maximum heart rate level should be during exercise is fundamental to setting effective exercise parameters and goals.

 

If your fitness level is improving, and you really want to keep improving it, how do you calculate your maximum exercise heart rate?

 

Last week we looked at this scenario:

You go to the gym, hop on a treadmill or stationary bike and see the maximum heart rate formula and exercise intensity graph to indicate where you should be exercising for your age.

The basic formula is: 220 minus your age multiplied by 50 to 70%

 

So let’s punch in some numbers.

If you’re 40 years old, your max exercise heart rate will be 180 bpm. What does that tell you? It tells you that 180 bpm is the highest heart rate number you should obtain while exercising at your maximum level. But you’ve already seen that the maximum level can only be, and should only be, sustained for no more than several minutes.

So, unless you’re planning to exercise for just two to three minutes, how do you decide what heart rate you should be exercising at?

The percentage number you use really does depend upon what you’re trying to achieve. Do you want to work on your power, the speed you can move a barbell from your chest to an overhead position? Maybe explode from a crouched over position in a 100 meter sprint? Or do you want to get long, lean muscles?

 

What if you just want to work on your general fitness level, or burn off some of that pesky fat that accumulated when you weren’t looking?

I promise we’ll get into more specifics about what percentage is likely to be best for you, but today we’ll stick to discussions about averages. For most people, they want to aim for 50 to 70% of the maximum heart rate of 180. So the formula for would look like:

 

Max HR formula: 220 minus your age multiplied by .50, .60, or .70

 

So, with 220 minus 40 we arrive at our 180 and then multiply that by 50%. That number would be 90 bpm. As I noted last week, that number doesn’t sound very high. But it can be very effective for someone trying to maintain their fitness level, is a beginner, or is planning to walk the treadmill for an hour or more at a moderate pace.

This is the average. And as handy as averages can be sometimes, they often don’t tell the story you want told. So we want to get more specific. We want to ask a different question.

 

Using gold standard formula for setting your exercise heart rate—

If your fitness level and heart function are improving, and you really want to keep improving, how do you calculate your maximum exercise heart rate?

 

You want to use the Karvonen Heart Rate formula, the gold standard in exercise heart rate calculations.

 

Let’s go back to the max heart rate calculation formula. Only now, we’re going to tweak it for exercise and use that important information you gathered about heart rate a couple of weeks ago. I’ll use the 40-year old example again.

Ms. 40-year old Lulu Lemon jumps on the treadmill at the gym. She’s in better-than-average physical condition, because just that week she measured her resting heart at 65 bpm, not the average 80, which is what is used for the average formula posted on the treadmill she’s on. But she doesn’t want average. She wants personal!

So, she takes that 65 bpm number and plugs it into a more accurate formula to determine her maximum exercise heart rate—

 

Formula steps—

  1. 220 minus her age of 40 = 180
  2. Now this is where the change starts. This calculation will tell her what her heart rate reserve or cushion is.

180 bpm minus her resting heart rate of 65.

180 – 65 (resting heart rate) = 115 (heart rate reserve)

  1. Ms. Lemon wants to focus on a fat-burning workout for this session, so she plans to walk at 50 to 70% of her heart rate reserve. So she calculates the range this way:

115 (heart rate reserve) multiplied by 50% = 57.5

115 (heart rate reserve multiplied by 70% = 80.5

This gives her a nice percentage range to work within, but now she needs to know exactly what her exercise heart rate should be within those ranges. So she returns to her resting heart rate for the final calculation.

  1. 65 (resting heart rate) + 57.5 (50% of her reserve) = 122.5 bpm

   65 (resting heart rate) + 80.5 (70% of her reserve) = 145.5 bpm

So Ms. Lemon knows that she can safely and effectively exercise in a heart rate range of 123 to 146 bpm.

Abbreviated, the formula looks like this:

220 – 40 = 180 (max heart rate)

180 – 65 (resting heart rate) = 115 (reserve heart rate)

115 x 50% = 57.5; and 115 x 70% = 80.5

65 + 57.5 = 123 exercise heart rate (rounded up); and 65 + 81 = 146

a 123 to 146 bpm target exercise heart rate range

 

What difference does it make?

Tons! A quick look at what Ms. Lemon’s target rate would be if her resting heart rate were 80 tells you that this target range would change from 123 to 146 bpm for the lower rate of 65, to the higher range of 130 to 155 for the higher rate of 80.

Do you see the difference? Ms. Lemon is in better condition, so she doesn’t have to maintain as high of a target heart rate range as her 80 bpm counterpart. In short, she doesn’t have to work as hard because her body is already more efficient! Cool, huh?

 

Let’s look at an older (just got my senior movie discount) lady like me—

I’m 60 (just), with a resting heart rate of 58. (An anesthesiologist once quipped he could make it lower during my surgery. Ha! Funny guy. No doubt he could take it to zero!)

Anyway, my calculations would look like this:

220 – 60 = 160 (Eek! I hate to look at that low number.)

160 – 58 (my resting heart rate) = 102 (reserve heart rate)

102 x .50 = 51; and 102 x .70 = 71.4

Add my resting HR of 58 to 51, and I get a minimum exercise heart rate of 109.

Add my resting HR of 58 to 71.4, and I get a maximum exercise heart rate of 129.

So, if I want to burn some fat, I should exercise within a heart rate range of 109 – 129 while I’m plugging away on the treadmill next to Ms. Lemon, who has to (and can) work harder than me.

 

Can you work in higher ranges? Sure. But as I’ve said before, it will all depend upon what your exercise goal is.

We’ll look at some of those goals and target differences next week!

Until next time,

Happy heart rate targeting!

(If you like this post and think it might be helpful to others, please pass it on. Or if you have a question, send me a comment in the comment box. I’d love to hear from you!)

Blessings,

Andrea

 

*You should always check with your doctor about what your target heart rate should be if you’re taking medication for a heart condition.

Photo courtesy of Google Images

Why Knowing Your Resting and Exercise Heart Rate is Critical to Good Health

What do you know about your resting and exercise heart rate? What should you know? Were you able to get an idea of what your normal resting heart rate is when you established some baselines for your vitals a couple of weeks ago? (See April 4th’s post: Welcome to Workout Wednesdays! http://andreaarthurowan.com/2018/04/04/welcome-to-workout-wednesdays/admin/ )

Before we get too far down the road with a discussion about heart rate, let’s start with the basics, so we can continue laying those important health and fitness tip brick foundations!

 

Heart Rate basics—

While you probably know what your resting heart rate measures—how many times your heart beats in a minute—do you know what that number actually tells you about your heart and your health?

Simply put, resting heart rate tells you just how hard your heart is working while at rest to supply your body’s oxygen needs. Just how many times does it have to contract in a minute to squirt blood through the pipes to get your body oxygenated for plain old activities of daily living, or sleeping, or sitting in a chair watching television?

 

Two more things your resting heart rate can tell you—

  • Reveal your risk for heart attack, and
  • Reveal your aerobic capacity—the amount of oxygen your body is able to consume, or the heart’s ability to pump oxygenated blood to your muscles.

 

As your oxygen supply needs change throughout the day, your heart will speed up or slow down to accommodate those needs. Or at least it should. What is “normal” for you, though, will depend upon your age, gender, and fitness level.

According to a Harvard Women’s Health Watch on-line article titled “What Your Heart Rate is Telling You,” says a 2010 Women’s Health Initiative study report indicated that a lower heart rate in post-menopausal women might protect against heart attacks. Those having a resting heart rate of 76 beats per minute (bpm) or greater were 26% more likely to have a heart attack or die than those having a resting heart rate of 62 bpm or lower.

They recommended having a chat with your doctor if your resting heart rate hovers consistently above 80 bpm. (For further reading, see the link at the bottom of this post.)

It’s also a good idea to take your resting heart occasionally (don’t just rely on a one-time measurement) so you can determine how, and if it’s changing. If you see a sudden change from what’s “normal” for you, it’s a good idea to discuss this with your physician. It may be a symptom or indicator of something going on with your heart or vascular health.

 

What you need to know about maximum heart rate in exercise—

Your heart rate usually rises during intense workouts, prolonged long-distance (aerobic) exercise workouts, stress and illness. Your heart’s maximum heart rate is the rate at which your heart is working at its hardest to supply oxygen to your body. In exercise, this is the rate that can only be sustained for several minutes.

Your maximum heart rate is a function of that aerobic capacity we already mentioned. When an exercise physiologist measures it, she’ll write in terms of VO2 max and actually measure the volume of oxygen you move through your lungs during exercise. To get an exact measurement, it’s a complicated, messy process of actually breathing into a tube during exercise, collecting your breath in a bag and then analyzing that volume through a special machine. The more conditioned you are, the higher your VO2 max usually is.

 

How do you calculate your maximum exercise heart rate?

Ever go to the gym, hop on a treadmill or stationary bike and see the maximum heart rate formula and exercise intensity graph to indicate where you should be exercising for your age?

The basic formula is: 220 – your age x 50 – 70%

Start with the number 220 and then subtract your age from that. If you’re 40 years old, it will be 180 bpm. So what does that tell you? It tells you that 180 bpm is the highest heart rate number you should obtain while exercising at your maximum level. But you’ve already seen that the maximum level can only be, and should only be, sustained for no more than several minutes.

So, unless you’re planning to exercise for just two to three minutes, how do you decide what heart rate you should be exercising at?

Well, it really depends upon what you’re trying to achieve. We’ll delve into those specifics in a future post, but, in general, you could aim for 50- 70 or 80% of 180. So the formula would look like:

 

Max HR formula: 220 minus your age multiplied by .50, .60, .70, or .80

 

If you’re aiming for middle-of-the-road, new exerciser level, that number would come in around 90 bpm. Doesn’t sound very high, does it? But it can be a sound level to aim for if you’re an exercise newbie, or just getting back into the swing of things following an illness.

HOWEVER, that formula is NOT the most accurate or desirable formula if:

—You are in good physical condition.

—You have a low resting heart rate.

 

So what is the most desirable formula? We’ll explore that in next week’s post, when I’ll give you that critical formula to help you better judge and develop your personal exercise intensity. *

 

 

One more (GREAT) reason to strive for a lower heart rate—   

 

 

If lowering your risk of having or dying of a heart attack isn’t enough, maybe this other finding noted in Harvard’s article might give you a nudge to lower your heart rate.

 

“… a small controlled trial demonstrated that men and women with mild cognitive impairment who raised their aerobic capacity also improved their performance on tests of memory and reasoning.”

 

In later posts, you’ll learn more about how physical exercise doesn’t just help the body but improves brain function! And who doesn’t want to have a better, sharper brain?

 

 Trivia Question?

Which athletes are notorious for boasting the highest VO2 maximum measurements? (You’ll learn the answer next Wednesday!)

 

Until next time,

Blessings for prosperity in all things—emotional, physical and spiritual!

Andrea

 

*You should always check with your doctor about what your target heart rate should be if you’re taking medication for a heart condition.

Link: Harvard Health article “What Your Heart Rate is Telling You https://www.health.harvard.edu/heart-health/what-your-heart-rate-is-telling-you

Photos courtesy of Google Images