Resting heart-rate??

[Fusebox]

Hi People,

Question. Whats the avg resting heart rate for someone who is healthy and has avg fitness??

Ive started cardio, (skipping rope) and my resting heart rate atm, is 57beats/min. A little high in my opinion.

[da1prophet]

Originally Posted by Fusebox

Hi People,

Question. Whats the avg resting heart rate for someone who is healthy and has avg fitness??

Ive started cardio, (skipping rope) and my resting heart rate atm, is 57beats/min. A little high in my opinion.

57 bpm is actually pretty low...if I'm not mistaken the average is 70 to 75 bpm. For some reason the average for females is slightly higher than males and it typically goes up as you age.

If you've just started doing cardio the 57 bpm is almost too low...make sure you're measuring it correctly. Trained endurance athletes usually fall somewhere between 50 and 60 bpm to put your score in context.

[Baltar]

57 bpm is an awesome resting heart rate. The average for men is 70, and for women 75. The lower the better of course, but I don't think it's possible to go lower than around 45-50 without the heart growing too big (which causes its own problems).

[da1prophet]

Originally Posted by Baltar

57 bpm is an awesome resting heart rate. The average for men is 70, and for women 75. The lower the better of course, but I don't think it's possible to go lower than around 45-50 without the heart growing too big (which causes its own problems).

As I noted in my post 57 is *very* good, but my concern was that unless the original poster is a serious athlete (the indication was that he/she had just started cardio") it might be too low. The medical terminology for a resting heart rate under 60 is "bradycardia". It's only a problem if their are symptoms associated with it, but a resting heart rate that low in someone who isn't a serious athlete is a bit unusual. Don't know if its cause for alarm or anything, but it is *very* low for someone who hasn't been training for years...

[Baltar]

Originally Posted by da1prophet

As I noted in my post 57 is *very* good, but my concern was that unless the original poster is a serious athlete (the indication was that he/she had just started cardio") it might be too low.

You're right, I overlooked that fact. Most likely a measuring error on the part of the OP though.

[Fusebox]

yea definitely something wrong then in my measurements....
So resting heart rate is measured when? when your in normal steady relaxed state??

I always thought, that resting heart rate should be in the high 40s or low 50s.
Im young too, only 26

[Baltar]

Originally Posted by Fusebox

yea definitely something wrong then in my measurements....
So resting heart rate is measured when? when your in normal steady relaxed state??

From what I remember, you should measure your resting heart rate right after you wake up in the morning.

Originally Posted by Fusebox

I always thought, that resting heart rate should be in the high 40s or low 50s.
Im young too, only 26

I think astronauts have resting heart rates in the 50's. It requires a lot of physical training to get your heart to be so strong that it has to pump less than one time per second.

[Fusebox]

Actually the reason why I started this thread is that I was listening to Zig Ziglar, and he said he was 60, and his rest heart rate was 41! holy moly!!

[Erki]

Interesting... I just checked my heart rate and mine was also below 60. maybe I did something wrong though...I don't have any machinery to measure it so I just counted my heart beats over the course of one minute. Maybe I failed to count some beats then. And btw it's not the first time I have got my rhr below 60, and I'm far from an athlete too...

[Baltar]

How are you measuring it? The easiest way is to measure it on the neck. Wrist is more difficult. You also need to use an accurate timer, and a quick estimate can be made by measuring for 15 seconds (x4) or 30 seconds (x2).

[Frans]

Originally Posted by Fusebox

Actually the reason why I started this thread is that I was listening to Zig Ziglar, and he said he was 60, and his rest heart rate was 41! holy moly!!

This is not exceptional. I'm 55 (56 in May), well trained, and my resting heart rate is 40.

FYI: The Spanish cyclist Miguel Indurain (multiple winner of the Tour de France) had a resting heart rate of 28 in his glory days.

[Fusebox]

Yep, Frans you just confirmed it for me

Thats a personal fitness goal, to get the resting heart rate down to mid to high 40s.

[Jessica Adlin]

A true resting heart rate is taking right when you open your eyes in the morning, before you get up out of bed.

An "average" resting HR is based on population averages. Based on a normal distribution on a bell curve, the "average resting HR is between 60-100bpm. However, there are those individuals who are out on the tails of the bell curve, the outliers, those whose resting HR is 2 standard deviations from the norm - their resting HRs may be lower than average (or higher) and still be normal. We associate lower resting HRs with an aerobically fit person but some people genetically have a lower resting HR.

In general, women's resting HR are higher than men's because they have smaller hearts (so they have to pump faster to pump an equivalent amount of blood).

Whether you genetically have a low resting HR or not, your resting HR rate WILL go down if you train aerobically on a regular, consistent basis. This is actually on of the measure of whether your training program is working...your resting HR goes down. Keeping track of your waking HR is a good training tool...if it slowly goes down, you are doing something right. If it goes up, it is an indication that you are overtraining. A side note: a waking HR that is slightly above normal can also be one of the first indications that you are getting a cold/flu. Great time to do take some preventative steps to ward the virus off entirely!

I think we see the champions of endurance events having extremely low resting HR both because of their amazing cardiorespiratory fitness as well as their gifted genetical make-up.

A number of thing increase our resting heart rate: stress, caffeine consumption, and, surprisingly, overeating!

[Fusebox]

And now, if we can only remember to measure heart rate when we do wake up. Not easy.

[Jessica Adlin]

Yes. remembering to take your HR upon waking definitely takes some getting used to!

At first you remember when you are in the shower, then you remember as you are just getting out of bed, but eventually, it becomes second nature to open your eyes and count your HR for a minute. A NOTE: waking up to a loud alarm clock will definitely elevate your HR!

[Saidin]

Did you know being immersed in water also slows down your heart rate? It has something to do, presumably, with being inside a bag of water for 9 months prior to being born. You can slow down your heartrate by relaxing, controlling your breath etc. Yoga and other things like that can help.

Freedivers make use of this when holding their breath. I've read somewhere that there are freedivers whose heartrates slow down to less than 10 bpm when in cold water. Sorry I can't be more specific about that with a link or names. Anyway ... apparently the slow heart rate helps you to hold your breath for over 6 minutes!

[Fusebox]

Update:

Ive been doing regular cardio over the past month since the original post was made and my RHR is now 50.

[Trustme]

The resting heart rate of Miguel Indurain (winner of Tour de France) was 29 as far as I remember

[Saidin]

Originally Posted by Trustme

The resting heart rate of Miguel Indurain (winner of Tour de France) was 29 as far as I remember

Yes, looks like it.