Pulse during physical activity: what is important to know?


Read in this article:
  1. How should you walk to lose weight?
  2. Walking and heart rate
  3. How to measure heart rate and other indicators while walking?
  4. Nordic walking for weight loss
  5. Movement to a slim figure

People who want to get rid of extra pounds carefully follow new diets, look for a suitable sport that will help them lose weight quickly, and sometimes become addicted to “miracle pills” that actually cause harm to their health rather than benefit their figure. Meanwhile, there is a very simple and yet effective way to lose weight, accessible to everyone. This is normal walking.

Of course, walking at a leisurely pace will not give the expected result. Walking for weight loss requires a certain pace, regularity and duration. These are the principles that underlie success. Let's look at each of them in more detail.

The importance of heart rate during training

Monitoring heart rate during training is necessary to:

  • determine the intensity of classes;
  • effectively use oxygen to generate energy during aerobic exercise;
  • choose a load to develop endurance;
  • prevent stress on the cardiovascular system.

Those who have problems with the heart and blood vessels should be especially careful during exercise. For such patients, the load is selected based on an ECG machine with tests on a bicycle ergometer.

A sudden achievement of maximum heart rate is also contraindicated for those who have not previously exercised at all. Like other muscles in the human body, the heart needs time to reach a certain exercise regime. The duration of the preparatory period should be from three to six months.

With the correct load, heart rate should be measured several times:

  • before classes;
  • after warming up;
  • at the end of the main part;
  • when the load decreases;
  • after classes during the cool down process.

IMPORTANT! Pulse is considered a more objective criterion of literacy in classes, in contrast to well-being.

Normal heart rate when walking on a treadmill

The heart rate when training on a treadmill depends on the degree of load and the tasks set. You should proceed from the maximum possible heart rate, which is calculated by the formula: 220 – age.

If your goal is fat burning, then your heart rate per minute should be 60–70% of this number. If you want to strengthen the cardiovascular system, then 70–80%.

For example, if you are 25 years old, then your maximum heart rate is 220 – 25 = 195. This means that during intense training, your heart rate should be 195 x 60% = 120 beats/min.

Using the formula, calculate the heart rate value for aerobic exercise.

Interesting video on the topic:

Pulse zone

Pulse is the rate at which the heart beats over one minute. There is also the concept of a pulse zone, which determines the range from the heart rate at rest to the maximum load on the body.

In everyday life, a person does not need to monitor his pulse zone. But for athletes this parameter is very important. The fact is that when the heart rate is in only one zone, it promotes weight loss; at high values, the endurance of the human body increases

Help: Each person has his own pulse zone, which is determined using laboratory tests.

Normal heart rate limits when walking fast

The heart rate increases with increasing stress on the body. You can test your fitness level by climbing stairs. To do this, walk up to the 5th–6th floor and measure your heart rate. If the data obtained was 100 beats/min, you are in good shape, 120 is an average level of training, more than 120 is an unsatisfactory result.

If a woman has a contraction frequency of more than 120 beats per minute at an accelerated pace, she needs to train more often and for longer. If your heart rate is 140 beats per minute, you should switch your workouts to a gentle mode and breathe deeply during exercise. This indicator value indicates heart overload and can be harmful to health.

Safe heart rate during exercise

Heart rate is an objective criterion for assessing training load during training. Using heart rate, you can regulate the intensity of your exercise.

During aerobic exercise, heart rate indicators are not informative and cannot be used to regulate strength loads in the gym.

During sports exercises

Physical activity makes the heart beat faster. As a result, the volume of pumped blood is often released into the system to supply the human muscles and organs with oxygen, so the number of shocks increases greatly.

If the body has not previously been exposed to heavy exercise, then a high heart rate during sports is considered normal. For professionals, even during training, the heart rate increases slightly, which is explained by constant cardio loads. The heart muscle gets used to it over time and copes with pumping blood without effort.

Heart rate during strength training

Strength loads are characterized by higher heart rate readings, unlike walking or running. After them, the pulse rises to ninety percent of the maximum, but this value is suitable for healthy people. When there is no preparation or a person has suffered from any illness, the heart rate cannot be increased above 85%. For example, if a person is forty-five years old, then the permissible limit is 85% of the maximum: 220 − 45 = 175, which is 149 beats per minute.

The main thing here is to wait for the pulse to recover before another approach. He should get back to ninety beats per minute. A person should not experience shortness of breath, increased heart rate or discomfort in the heart area. If the pulse has not decreased in seven minutes, then this indicates an incorrectly selected load, and it must be reduced.

Help: If you do strength exercises with a constantly high heart rate, this can disrupt the nutrition of the myocardium.

During cardio training

This category includes fitness training. In other words, your heart rate should be between 135 and 150 beats per minute. But first you need to undergo a special computer examination, which will help determine the upper and lower pulse threshold.

Help: The duration of cardio training should be from forty to fifty minutes.

Heart rate while walking

Walking is extremely beneficial for the human body. They improve well-being, lift your spirits and promote weight loss. The normal heart rate when walking is from 100 to 125 beats per minute. At rest, normal rates are from sixty to one hundred beats per minute.

Heart rate when running in women and men

Normally, the pulse of women and men is different, but besides this indicator, there are others that radically change the final value.

The normal heart rate for men can be determined using averaged data. There are several types of loads, and they all differ in maximum heart rate and training efficiency.

For a man with average physical shape:

  • warm-up - from 95 to 115 beats per minute;
  • walking - from 115 to 135;
  • jogging - from 134 to 154.

Help: Anything higher than the presented indicators is considered excessive and has a negative effect on the human body.

Women's indicators are as follows:

  • warm-up - from 97 to 117 beats/min;
  • walking - from 117 to 136;
  • jogging - from 136 to 155.

While cycling

With such loads, the heart rate becomes seventy percent higher than the maximum. This frequency is used to restore the body after high loads; it can be alternated with an active mode within 70–80 percent.

If classes are held within 75% of the maximum, then endurance increases and fat burning occurs. You can move into the zone with a heart rate of eighty or ninety percent of the maximum and above for no more than one minute.

Heart rate during interval training

These are aerobic exercises that differ from standard ones in that they involve alternating pace and level of stress on the body. This type of training is used by bodybuilders, as interval training helps burn fat without losing muscle mass and increases the volume of the heart, which helps bodybuilders cope with pumping a large volume of blood.

The heart rate during such training ranges from 90 to 100 percent of maximum. Of course, there are programs that assume smaller values. Here everyone chooses the program that suits them best.

What should your heart rate be when walking calmly?

At rest, heart rate is 60–80 beats/min. The average walking pulse of a healthy person is 100 beats/min. The increase is due to the fact that the body requires more energy during exercise. The heart is forced to pump blood faster to make up for the lack of oxygen and nutrients.

This figure depends on gender, age, bad habits, body weight, and level of physical fitness. The state of the environment and air temperature also affect cardiac activity. Walking at a calm pace, a person practically does not strain physically.

Therefore, the heart rate when walking is on average 105–112 beats per minute. An increase in this indicator indicates anaerobic load, which promotes weight loss.

Maximum heart rate in older people

In older people, it is contraindicated to increase the maximum heart rate to ninety percent; seventy percent is enough. These recommendations are suitable for people who do not have heart problems.

But if a person has suffered a heart attack, has angina pectoris or arrhythmia, then it is necessary to select an individual pulse threshold. This can only be done using an ECG with stress. Its meaning is that the patient’s electrocardiogram is recorded at the time of exercise. The doctor uses it to find the maximum limit that the patient should not exceed.

How age and gender affect heart rate when walking

Heart rate norms during physical activity differ between women and men, although not much. Age also makes some adjustments. When determining the maximum and normal heart rate while walking, an athlete must take into account age and gender characteristics:

  • For men - 100–110 beats/min at an average pace. However, it is difficult to find a representative of the stronger sex with ideal cardiac performance. This is due to a sedentary lifestyle, bad habits, and low levels of physical activity.
  • For women, the normal heart rate when walking is 100–120. In them, disturbances in the normal rhythm of the heartbeat can be caused not only by diseases. Natural causes of failure are pregnancy or hormonal imbalance during menstruation. Emotional state also matters.
  • The child’s body spends a lot of energy on growth and physical development. In childhood, the heart rate differs from the heart rate in adulthood and is 90–120 at rest. The older the child, the more the average heart rate when walking approaches adult norms.
  • In older people, the heart rate should not be too different from the figures for a middle-aged person. However, over the years, the likelihood of cardiac diseases increases. Illnesses can provoke an imbalance in the functioning of the heart muscle. This leads to an increase in heart rate at the slightest physical exertion. Even walking up a flight of stairs can cause your heart rate to increase.

If your heart rate is low during exercise

A low heart rate during exercise, as noted above, indicates a disruption in the functioning of the cardiovascular system. Doctors say that people who do not reach one hundred beats per minute in six minutes are at risk of developing a complex form of arrhythmia in the future, so they need to be examined.

A slow pulse is affected by blood pressure lowering medications for tachycardia, lack of thyroid hormones, and stomach ulcers. Professional athletes tend to have low heart rates due to overtraining.

You need to know your pulse during training in order to exercise effectively without harming your heart. For the calculation, the maximum value and zone of permissible increase in aerobic loads are used. The correct training plan is one that slows your resting heart rate.

What to do if your heart rate is high

High heart rates are called tachycardia. If you suddenly feel suffocation and heaviness in your chest while walking, stop and take a deep breath. If attacks occur frequently and are not associated with increased physical activity, this is a reason to consult a doctor.

In the event of a sudden attack of tachycardia, call an ambulance, and take a comfortable position, try to relax and breathe deeply. Before the doctor arrives, you need to open the windows in the room, unfasten the clothes that are compressing the sternum and put a cold compress on your head.

To prevent heart problems, give up cigarettes and other bad habits in favor of an active lifestyle.

Where is the best place to measure your pulse?

The most convenient place for measuring the pulse is the wrist, on which the radial artery is located. You need to place your index and middle finger on this artery. You cannot apply other fingers, because it is easy to confuse the pulsations of their vessels with contractions of the artery on the wrist.

There are some objective reasons for high heart rate in men, which can distort the correct indicators characteristic of a particular person. So, you cannot measure your pulse:

  • for infectious diseases and high body temperature;
  • after active sports and other physical activities;
  • when taking medications;
  • after bath procedures, visiting a sauna and a hot shower;
  • during alcohol intoxication;
  • after sexual intercourse;
  • after prolonged exposure to high or low temperatures;
  • on a full stomach.

Heart rate norms for sports

August 17, 2016

Pulse is important not only for the average person, but also for those who play sports. How does it affect the training process, and what heart rate standards are there (if any) for representatives of different sports?

Modern sports are not what they used to be. Moreover, development is moving towards positive changes, adapting to modern trends and genetic changes in people’s bodies. Compare, for example, boxing before and now. Everything has changed: technique, speed, and rules. Of course, the basic elements remained unchanged, but still a lot has changed. Every year the popularization of a healthy lifestyle among the population is growing and, consequently, the number of people involved in sports is increasing. Even if they do it at an amateur level. This is also due to the fact that now it is not necessary to have a medical education and work in a clinic, surrounded by various devices, in order to carefully monitor your health. Scientific and technological progress has taken a very big step forward over the past three decades. Now you can do a lot of simple, everyday research without leaving your home. Of course, doctors are increasingly placing various sensors on professional athletes during training, but this has transferred to amateur sports in a much simpler and more accessible form. For example, a watch has long ceased to be an accessory that simply shows the time. At the moment, they have become “wiser” and acquired many additional functions. The most popular is measuring changes in heart rate. Why would a person involved in sports even know this? How will this affect the training process, and what heart rate standards are there (if any) for representatives of different areas of sports culture? Now let's figure it all out. Pulse is an important part when assessing the effectiveness of training. By knowing your heart rate, you can approach your workouts more consciously, knowing where you can increase the load and when you need to slightly reduce the intensity of the workout. However, first you need to understand what affects the pulse?

  • Physical state. The better trained you are, the fewer contractions your heart needs to make.
  • Human weight. With greater body weight, the heart has to work harder.
  • Smoking, along with alcohol, makes our heart work harder.
  • Our psycho-emotional state. Emotions and the functioning of the body are closely related - for example, when we are angry, our heart beats faster.
  • Temperature. The colder it is, the lower the contraction rate.

Under different loads, a person's heart rate will change differently. So, for example, for those who began to engage in a sport where endurance is required, the average resting heart rate will be about 50 beats per minute for people 22-25 years old. While for those who train in speed-strength sports, this value is equal to 57-61 beats per minute. For beginner athletes, this value is even slightly higher - approximately 65 strokes.


Why is it even necessary to know your pulse during sports? For example, to accurately understand that you are training to the best of your real capabilities and are not “freeloading”, justifying yourself with fatigue. Pulse is an excellent assistant in determining your own load in order to work out really effectively, without overworking yourself too much and without slacking off at the same time. To determine your heart rate during training, you must first find out your maximum threshold. For men it is calculated according to the formula: 220 minus age, and for women - 226 minus age. For example, for a 25-year-old guy, the maximum heart rate (heart rate) is 195 beats per minute.


A couple more useful numbers and formulas:
When warming up, the heart rate should not exceed 50-60%

from the maximum value.
Thus, based on the average indicators, you can start training with a heart rate from 97.5 to 117
(calculated using the formula 195 * 0.5 = 97.5).
During cardio training, heart rate should not exceed 60-70%
of the maximum.
When running, this value increases to 70-80%
.
By the way, during long workouts it is especially important to monitor your heart rate so that it does not go into the so-called “red zone,” which is 90-95%
of the maximum value.
You should start playing sports wisely, choosing suitable shoes and clothes, developing a training system and monitoring your condition.
Only with a responsible approach can a person achieve truly good results and maximize their physical fitness. Tags:

  • Sport
  • Pulse

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