How A Cardio Heart Rate Monitor Helps You
Why Have a Cardio Heart Rate Monitor?
I recently finished a 12-week team fitness and weight loss program at my local gym, where I learned many valuable things about fitness training and how it relates to heart health and efficient workouts. I experienced first-hand the necessity of being able to watch your heart rate with an exercise heart rate monitor, while doing various speed and incline intervals on the treadmill to have a more effective workout. A cardio heart rate monitor can tell you your heart rate, cardio training zone, calories burned and give you valuable heart smart knowledge about your body’s fitness.
Polar F6 Heart Rate Monitor WatchBuy New: $104.95 - $141.88 (On sale from $181.95)
The stylish Polar F6 heart rate monitor is a great choice for using in large groups, where other exercisers might be using wireless training gear that could interfere with your own signal. The F6’s coded transmission prevents crosstalk with other monitors so you’ll get a personalized workout–even in a class environment. It’s packed with innovative training features to help you toward your exercise goals, including:
* Zone Pointer: A visible and audible feature on the display of your heart rate monitor showing your target heart rate zone and where your current heart rate is within that zone.
* Polar OwnCal: This feature shows your energy expenditure during one exercise session as well as your accumulated kilocalories during several exercise sessions. You can set daily and weekly exercise goals in terms of calorie expenditure with the OwnCal feature. Because the OwnCal tracks both the energy expenditure during one exercise session and the accumulated kilocalories during a longer time (e.g. one week), it helps in achieving both short-term and long-term goals.
* Polar OwnZone: This feature guides you through an appropriate warm-up routine and automatically determines a safe and effective exercise heart rate zone–your OwnZone–while taking into account your current physical condition.
* Polar OwnCode: This technology blocks unwanted signals from other heart rate monitors, ensuring disturbance-free transmission of your heart rate data.
The Fitness Bullets feature shows a bullet on the monitor’s display for every 10 minutes spent exercising/training in your target heart rate zone. The Time in Target Zone feature calculates the amount of total exercise time spent in your personal target zone. You can use this feature together with the Total Exercise Time to determine the effectiveness of your exercise program. You can also better assess your training data using the included Polar Precision Performance (PPP) 4.0 software and the SonicLink feature, which wirelessly uploads exercise settings to the software or to Polar’s web service.
Feature Detail
* Display of heart rate, exercise time, and average heart rate
* 24 hour clock with day/week indicator and stopwatch
* Large easy-to-read display with split screen
* One-year average battery life
* Water resistant to 30 meters (100 feet)
Know Your Cardio Zones
After completing this fitness program, I learned that it is absolutely necessary to know what heart rate training zone you are working in to improve your workout efficiency — to get the most benefit in the least amount of time. A heart rate monitor helps you know what cardio zone (Zones 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5) you are working in. During class, we spent most of our time working between Zone 2: the “temperate zone,” Zone 3: the “aerobic zone,” and some time in Zone 4: the “threshold zone.” Zone 2 is commonly known as the fat burning zone, where you are exercising comfortably and body fat begins moving out of your cells. Zone 3, typically referred to as the sweat zone, involves exercising at 70%-80% of your maximum heart rate, burning a combination of fat and carbohydrates and increasing your aerobic capacity.
Beginning to intermediate workouts include work in Zone 2 & 3 for people training to improve their aerobic fitness. Zone 4 is a tougher place to work out, where you go above your “Anaerobic Threshold (AT).” (Your AT is the level of exercise your body can sustain utilizing both fat and carbohydrates as fuel). Finally, Zone 5: the “high zone,” uses the highest pecentage of heart beats and calories burned as you become more advanced and get in top physical condition. I could always count on my heart rate monitor to tell me which zone I was in and for how long, including my heart rates and recovery times. After a period of time, I got to know how my body’s heart rate responded while working between these zones, and up to AT and back down.
Know Your Heart Rate - Hands Free
In addition, a heart rate monitor can tell you your heart rate while your hands remain free of the treadmill. While we walked or ran the treadmill, the trainer called out something like “OK, now three minutes to the top of Zone 3,” or “Two minutes recovery time to the bottom of Zone 2,” as we lifted 5 to 8 pound weights, or stretched rubber bands in various routines. Its convenient and easy to look at your heart rate monitor while you are in the middle of these routines using your arms and hands for upper body fitness. Our trainer continually stressed to a few in the class that did not yet have heart rate monitors, that the treadmill heart monitor could not be counted on to be accurate. This is especially so while a person is lifting weights at various inclines and speeds while walking or running.
Watch Your Calories Burn!
I enjoyed watching my cardio heart rate monitor tell me the number of calories I was burning while working out, as well as up to about three hours afterward. At the beginning of each treadmill workout, Id punch my heart rate monitor to the calorie display and hit “Start.” By watching this display continually during my workout, it helped me to know how my bodys heart rate coincided with the number of calories burned. (The calories will naturally burn more slowly in the beginning of your workout). As we warmed up and worked into Zone 3, then up to AT — it was interesting to watch the number of calories burn so much faster! What was even more fun — was seeing the number of calories burned at the end of the workout session.
More Efficient Workouts = More Benefits
No matter where you are on your road to lifetime fitness, by working out efficiently you will increase your benefits in a shorter period of time. You can expect to have more energy, feel stronger, and have less stress while learning to use a program tailored to your exercise fitness goals and heart health needs. If you are more fit but looking for improvements, you can still expect to enjoy working out, burn fat more efficiently and train smarter, not harder. Even if you’re a serious athlete or marathon runner, you will continually increase your heart monitoring knowledge, and be able to create a precision fitness training program. In my own experience, I decreased my body fat percentage by 5% and decreased my resting pulse rate and recovery times. I learned how my body’s heart rate responded while working between the zones, up to AT and back down. I gained valuable knowledge so I am continually able to increase my fat burning and aerobic capacities, and go to the next level of improvement.
Summary - Work Out Smarter!
Once you get a heart rate monitor, you’ll be hooked! You’ll no longer be content to not be able to know your heart rate, training zones or calories burned. You’ll realize that by knowing your heart rate, you’ll get the very most from your body’s fitness capacities and your time spent pursuing your lifetime fitness goals. Today, its all about working smarter, not harder! A heart rate monitor will help you to work out the smart way! You’ll gain valuable knowledge about your personal fitness, which helps you reach your fitness goals easier, and faster. Just remember - be consistent, and don’t give up!
www.BestCardioMonitors.com
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Omron HR-100C Heart Rate Monitor
Horizon Fitness EX56 Elliptical Trainer