Thursday, August 5, 2010

Max Heart Rate - For the Ladies


I subscribe to the montly "Women's Cycling" newsletter and today it had this little gem:

If you are a lady, and use a heart rate monitor to gage your workouts, you might be working too hard!

I rely on testing to see what my maximum heart rate is but I can see now why I was justified in doing that -- the old forumla is WRONG!

Old forumla: 220 minus your age.

New forumla: 206 minus 88% of your age.

Using the new forumla, guess what! I got a number that actually makes a lot more sense compared to test results. So there ya go!

Original article printed in NYTimes

5 comments:

  1. According to this my max HR is 178, but I can hit 190 without much trouble. Weird.

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  2. That's because you're a guy -- the old formula is still good for guys apparently. The new one is "for the ladies"

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  3. Should also note that that's why testing is important. Everyone's heart rate is different. Not everyone is going to fit into a math equation.

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  4. I believe less then 5 percent of population fits equations for max hr.

    Polar has a decent couple of tests ( fit test / own zone ) for determining max hr ... Or training levels- zones, which I think is really what people are after?

    Blog looking great thanks for adding link

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  5. So true, Peter. I know people with hearts like hummingbirds, and others with hearts like rhinos.

    Thanks for checking in!

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