Resting heart rate?

[iscariot]

So with the BMI talk and obesity in the news again...

Assuming resting heart rate provides a reasonable representation of fitness, what is your resting heart rate (ie. wake up in morning and measure heart rate before any activity)?

I'm usually on the boarder between high 40's and low 50's.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_rate

http://www.topendsports.com/testing/heart-rate-resting-chart.htm

http://www.topendsports.com/testing/heart-rate-resting.htm

[time2clmb]

Mines is similar to yours. 48-52. My BMI is higher than it should be and I consider myself 20lbs heavier than I should be. However, I am very active and am outdoors doing some thing every day. My diet is what keeps my extra pounds on.

[iscariot]

Mines is similar to yours. 48-52. My BMI is higher than it should be and I consider myself 20lbs heavier than I should be. However, I am very active and am outdoors doing some thing every day. My diet is what keeps my extra pounds on.

Yah, my bmi is higher than recommended, I consider myself about 5 lbs over my personal ideal. Pretty active with skiing and hockey in the winter, hiking and biking in the summer. Doctor said that being above my bmi is fine for me, as I'd be underweight if I was in the "good" bmi range.

The two doc's I see basically say that the bmi is ideal for sedentary couch surfing individuals. As soon as you add exercise on a regular basis, the bmi is a bit useless, particularly if your activities build big muscle groups like legs, gluts, and core...but that's another debate for another thread, and has been previously exhausted on TGR.


Resting rate after 2 coffee's and lunch was 52 - 53 bpm (did 3 tests intermittently over about 10 minutes).

[Summit]

60s at home (altitude)
40-50s at sea level

realistically: low 70s a lot because i'm always on caffeine/stressed

[pisteoff]

50 for me right now, but it's 3 pm after 3 cups of coffee, so that's probably a little higher than when I woke-up this morning.

[capulin overdrive]

60s at home (altitude)
40-50s at sea level

realistically: low 70s a lot because i'm always on caffeine/stressed


same here, if i'm awake i'm hoped up on coffee or monster.

[XtrPickels]

Absolute resting HR numbers are as worthless as absolute exercise HR numbers when trying to compare across individuals.

As and individual, you ought to note a decrease in both resting and exercise HR (per given intensity) with an improvement in fitness. However what your number is, compared to others, has little bearing on anything.

[Mani_UT]

Absolute resting HR numbers are as worthless as absolute exercise HR numbers when trying to compare across individuals. .

Exactly. When I am in shape (and me in shape in NOWHERE near say DTM in shape) I am around 36 bpm yet my endurance sucks! That's in Salt Lake too (mid altitude). I even went to see the doc a few years back being worried about it and he said it was fine. Right now, a little more porky, I am more around 45.

[hutash]

Low 50s, but I haven't been cycling a lot lately. Mid 40s when I raced. Age is a factor as well. At 50+ my max HR is quite a bit lower, and it goes up faster with less intensity then it used to. It sucks getting old.

[Jhaus]

Another vote for RHR being useless as a fitness gauge. I'm fairly active now, and I'm still around 65 generally. A few years ago when I didn't have a job and rode my bike 150+ miles a week and weighed 136 lbs I still was in the high 50's even before getting out of bed. And my max heart rate, as in "oh god I'm going to hurl lets see what the hrm says," is 212, much higher than the norm for my age.

Individuals differ, as always. RHR is useful for gauging individual progress, not for comparing your fitness to the fitness of others.

[iscariot]

I understand that resting heart rate is not an absolute measure of fitness, just as bmi is not.

That's why I posted the info links, so that people could understand what resting heart rate is generally indicative of, and the context in which to use the numbers.

[booner]

56 after a couple IPAs...

[Bean]

I threw a HRM on last summer when I woke up one morning and saw 38, but that was before I really stepped it up.

[Beyond]

Distribution's about 10 - 15 bpm lower than pop average for males, which is possible for a self-selected highly athletic sample. But I wonder if there's some grade deflation going on...

[Bean]

Distribution's about 10 - 15 bpm lower than pop average for males, which is possible for a self-selected highly athletic sample. But I wonder if there's some grade deflation going on...

I'd guess it's the former. Not a lot of lazy fatasses here (at least compared to the general population), especially for those who happen to know their RHR off-hand.

[mangle]

I'm high-50s/low-60s right now. I suspect it would be mid-50s if I were to take it before I got out of bed in the morning.

I'm 26, 6'2", 175lbs, used to be a pretty serious endurance athlete, but am now attempting to become a gymnast.

When I'm really in shape and swimming 50+ mi/wk, it drops to the low 50s and occasionally the high 40s.

[shredgnar]

Just drank a pot of coffee and I'm in the high 50's low 60's.

[toast2266]

At work, but mostly sitting on my ass. I'm in the low 60's.

[The AD]

I never check it when I wake up, but when I check it at work (with one of those automated blood pressure machines) it's typically 40-45. I'm 41 and 6'2" 180-185 lbs. My primary exercise is swimming and I'm swimming around 25K meters per week right now--almost all at anaerobic threshold pace or faster.

[plurpimpin]

just measured 58 after a half dozen cups of coffee

[wcf3]

Got a pretty accurate measurement of this when I was in the hospital last year. Both before medications were given and after they had worn off I was measured in the low 30's. It was kind of a pain in the ass, because they couldn't set the monitoring instruments alarm threshhold low enough to not constantly go off. (The minimum was 35bpm).

[SterlingSpikeDancer]

High 50s after I rolled out of bed.

[rocker6666]

HERE's some info,I run marathons not elite but pretty good for an older mag,47 i average in the top 7 percent wether its 200 runners or 30000 in overall place,much higher in age bracket. When im base training my resting hr 1st thing in the am hr is 48 to 58,also after taper before race its the same usually about 50 to 54.When im in peak phase which is the max milage and hardest training 60 milles a week,it gets down to 38 to 48.But I ussually dont sleep well and i'm on the verge of overtraining. Just some oberservations.

[schwerty]

Ha Ha. I'm fatter than I should be.

[dHills]

So just to add my 2sense since this is my cup o' tea.... Resting HR alone on basically one or varied occasions isn't really indicative of anything (as I'm sure some of the posted links mention, and as was stated before) It's just what your thumper is working at currently. However, if you can have the will power and tenacity to track your heart rate on a regular basis (ie. just before sleep and before standing in the morning) for a long period of time,(months/year), then it can be an extremely useful indicator of rising and falling fitness levels, effects of stress, sleeping and eating habits and so on.

Another factor that should be taken into heavy consideration, especially when comparing yourself to others, is your genetic predispositions, size, weight ect. Typically, the larger you are (not necessarily fat/ overweight) the lower your resting heart rate and even max heart rate will be. Concurrently, highly trained athletes and athletes trained at altitude will also have much lower resting heart rates but typically higher maximum heart rates. The reason for this is the amount of "base" or low intensity/ high volume that their bodies become accustom to thus allowing their heart rates to recover faster, sustain higher levels of performance at lower bpm, and have an overall higher pumping capacity.

Now. With all that said just about heart rate. If you want an extremely good indicator of your exact fitness through ALL of your heart rate zones. Look into getting these two little bastards of tests done.... LT Test (Lactate threshold test; can be done running or on a bike) and a Vo2 Max test (also bike or running.). These are usually performed at university Physiology Labs and in many cases in coaching businesses.
The important indicator for your LT is the power level and heart rate point in which your body is producing too much Lactate to compensate for aaaaannnnd then kaboom (not really, but its when things start to really hurt).... or in the case of trained endurance athletes, this is just where they start to suffer more because their training allows it and bodies can process the lactate for longer.
The Vo2 number, although not as important, is a percentage indication of the volume of air your lungs will allow you to respirate at maximum efforts. Just as an example and a good indicator, the average person participating in some recreational sports has a Vo2 of roughly 45-55. The highest Vo2 are typically in runners, cyclists, and some swimmers.... Lance Armstrong- 80 something, Miguel Indurian (cyclist)- 92 highest recorded. Me (elite cyclist)- 74.
With specific training, improvements made towards these number usually have HUGE performance gains as well as drastic improvement on resting HR, and maximal HR.

Hope this helped to confuse the hell outta everyone. :)

[rocker6666]

Thats certainly true hills but a much simpler way is to train with a heart rate monitor at max aerobic pace,180 minus your age, and check your work load every three weeks during training(distance covered as respect to time) to see your improvement.Unless your a pro in which Im sure it would pay to have all those test done.

[wooley12]

Quote from the kid in the back pack on a skin track some 30 years later

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-zVelEXU4KM8/SwS-7A6leiI/AAAAAAAAAVk/49kHOjtD0Rk/s512/GoDaddy%252521.jpg

[iscariot]

However, if you can have the will power and tenacity to track your heart rate on a regular basis (ie. just before sleep and before standing in the morning) for a long period of time,(months/year), then it can be an extremely useful indicator of rising and falling fitness levels, effects of stress, sleeping and eating habits and so on.

Another factor that should be taken into heavy consideration, especially when comparing yourself to others, is your genetic predispositions, size, weight ect. Typically, the larger you are (not necessarily fat/ overweight) the lower your resting heart rate and even max heart rate will be.

Thanks for your post. I usually track resting and max heart rate over the long term, along with what my heart rate is when it feels like I'm on autopilot (not a professional in this area at all so you'll have to forgive the laytalk). Not much difference over the last 20 or so years, so I guess that's good from a consistency standpoint...

[hutash]

Miguel Indurian (cyclist)- 92 highest recorded.

That guy is not fucken human, his heart must be the size of an elk.

What's the buzz among the ex-phys people on Lance and his "supposed" increase in VO2Max?

Now that I am back on the bike my RR is back into the mid 40's, it sucks to get out of shape.