Well, not exactly.
Your heart rate is only a good gauge of effort in certain types of exercise.
And it can even steer you wrong if the numbers are miscalibrated.
This measure is also notoriously inaccurate for some activities.
Spoiler: It doesnt.
Our bodies aregood at conserving energy in daily life when were burning a lot of calories during exercise.
The higher your heart rate during the workout, the harder youre working.
But thats not true of strength training.
Most of these lifts were brief efforts that were heavy enough to get me breathing hard afterward.
Those are the spikes on the graph.
From my lungs point of view, this looks a lot like going out for a tempo run.
But the cardio benefit isnot the reason we strength train.
Strength training challenges our muscles to get stronger.
Heart rate doesnt reflect how heavy or difficult the lift actually is.
(That ten-minute kettlebell workout I used as an example?
So how do you turn that count of heartbeats into a measure of intensity?
The simplest way is to use an app that converts your heart rate into a set ofheart rate zones.
These zones are helpful in training because each zone has a slightly different training effect.
Zone 2 training is great for building aerobic capacity without fatiguing you too much.
You dontneedto measure your heart rate to be able to train at these effort levels, though.
you’re able to feel it.
What number do you see when youre exercising at a pace where you could still easily hold a conversation?
What number do you see when youre going all-out?
The problem with that approach is thatits a one-size-fits-all formula that fits almost nobody.
Heres an example: Im 41 and myactualmax heart rate is somewhere north of 205.
Theyll be breathless, panting, legs burning, and their watch will say theyre in Zone 3.
Thats not right, either.
Training with miscalibrated zones can leave you either exhausted or under-trained.
(Swimming, where your body is horizontal, tends to have lower numbers still.)
So dont worry about your exact heart rate at first.
Higher means your cardiovascular system is working harder; lower means youre at an easier effort.
And remember that heart rate is only a tool to help you dial in your training.
Your body knows how hard its working whether youre wearing a smartwatch or not.
