Sports Heart Rate Monitor

Why monitoring your heart rate while doing sports is crucial?

It does not matter if you practice sports rarely, once a week or daily, whether you are a professional athlete that wants to reach the highest goals possible or an average coach potato that is only willing to shed some pounds, you need a sports heart rate monitor.

Heart rate monitoring means that you can easily control your heart rate (H/R) while exercising.  Controlling your heart rate is essential for many and whichever category of sportsman you are you will find a great reason to practice this.

First and foremost that is the best way to increase your cardiovascular fitness.  While using a simple formula you’ll be able to calculate your heart beat training zone in relation to what you would like to accomplish.

Normally trainers separate the heart rate zone into 5 categories, all based upon the basic heart rate while not doing any physical activity, your age and your sex.  It is recommended to exercise at least 30 minutes before the effects start to kick in and manifest.

The zones are :

·         Low intensity : 50%-60% of Max Heart Rate calculated

·         Weight control zone: 60%-70% of Max - keeping this rhythm for 45 minutes and the fat starts to burn in opposition of ingested carbohydrates.

·         Aerobic zone: 70%-80% of max.

·         Anaerobic zone: 80%-90% of max. Where you body starts to use the glycogen stored in your muscles.

·         Maximal zone: 90% - 100% of max.

Keeping you in the aerobic zone and improving the aerobic endurance is what most runners and long effort sport amateur look to achieve. Going out of this zone will reduce the affectivity and the results of the training.

This way you can monitor you fitness. It can prevent over training that will over stress your body, put setbacks in your training routine and may lead to injuries without mentioning the excessive use of muscle and body reserves that will effect your recuperation periods needed between exercises.

Heart monitoring will prevent under training as well, sometimes you can be lead to think that your performance is great while in reality the only way to determine that is by monitoring your heart rate.

Another important aspect is for those who seek to lose weight. Exercising for more than 30-45 minutes in the weight control zone, with brief peaks at the maximal zone will burn the stored fat and increase metabolism during the rest of the day.

Once exercising regularly with a sports heart rate monitor, over time you will see the effects of a steadier heart rate and it will take longer to reach higher pastes. This brings also an extra safety measure to this equation since by knowing your heart and the way it is functioning in this intimate matter the moment something starts to go wrong you will immediately be aware of it.

There is no better way to maximize the result of your exercise efforts. Hence, this is the fastest way to improve your physical condition. That’s especially true for most of the people that have to maintain a busy schedule and squeeze in the time to practice any sport.

A sports heart rate monitor can be a very encouraging device for the ones that train a lone and it can motivate and keep them on track to reach there goals.

Most monitors are made out of a plastic strap that has sensoring devices attached to it. The strap is strapped to the body and sends the H/R  information to a wrist watch that calculate and shows the current Beats Per Minute (BPM) . Recently for woman you can find even a heart monitor bra that has the electrodes integrated into the bra itself.