Heart Rate Monitors

You Cant Beat Using a Heart Rate Monitor (HRM)

HRMs can be used as exercise aids, motivational tools, trendy accessories, data analysers and safety equipment.

What are the benefits of using a HRM?

The main benefit and function of a HRM is to tell you your heart rate as you exercise.  It can prevent you from exercising too hard (training zones*) and risk overtraining or worse still incur an injury.  At the other end of the scale HRMs can indicate that you are not training hard enough and therefore working inefficiently.

Because the benefits of exercise are not immediate, when we work hard and spend valuable time on exercising, it’s great to know that what we are doing is going to give us the best results.

A HRM will give immediate feedback of intensity through an entire exercise session, increasing your confidence in your workouts and above all else a HRM can help you to maintain your motivation by quantifying your exercise sessions in terms of calories burned, session duration and average heart rate. This feedback acts as a pat on the back and drives you to carry on.

How Do HRM Work?

Most HRMs come with a chest strap and watch. The chest strap fastens around your chest. The chest strap senses your heart rate and transmits a signal using wireless technology to the watch. The watch displays your heart rate in beats per minute. Your heart rate is then used in conjunction with your personal details to calculate further information i.e. your maximum heart rate and how many calories you have burned.

HRMs are also available without chest straps, but your pulse is only recorded and displayed on demand when your fingers are in contact with sensors on the watch. A chest strap in comparison monitors your heart rate throughout your exercise session and records more accurate information.

Many HRMs are designed to be compatible with the most popular ranges of gym equipment, eg when you wear your chest strap your pulse and calorie expenditure is shown on the treadmill/x-trainer/bike display.

HRMs range from basic models that simply provide a continuous readout, to more complex mechanisms that store times spent in various zones and dowload date to a personal computer.  The costs can vary from £40 - £1,000.

For beginners/intermediate exercisers, I would recommend the following HRMs, in the value range of £45-£55: 

Training Zone* & Specific Information

If you would like specific information regarding training zones* or other information to suit your personal needs, please use the contact page to email me or contact me via my Blog Page or my mobile. 

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