Thursday
Apr102008
The Ups and Downs of Heart Rate Monitor Training
Thursday, April 10, 2008 at 5:36AM 
An article in today's NY Times discusses the various pros and cons of heart rate monitor training. In my experience, heart rate monitors only work if you know your own maximum and minimum heart rate. There's a pretty good book that explains how to do this called (and you'll forgive the title) Heart Rate Training for the Compleat (sic) Idiot
. Here's something from the article that I didn't know: swimmers have lower heart rates when they swim than when they run. Why?
The reason, Dr. O’Connor explained, is that during running, your heart has to push blood against gravity to bring it to your head. During swimming, your heart does not have to exert that extra force.
The Flutter Over Heart Rate
Reader Comments (2)
INTERESTING about the swimming.
Id hadnt seen that/known that either.
M.
Thanks for finding this, I'll have to check out the article. My heart rate runs high, so my monitor is always freaking me out by saying I should technically be dead whenever I really get going--I go over what the dumb charts say is the maximum possible rate, not just the target rate. Not dead yet, though, so I suspect for me the charts are pretty useless.
Perhaps I should have checked the Dummies book before I bought the monitor!