To get the most benefit from your cardiovascular workouts, you need to know where your pulse rate should be while doing the exercises. You should reach your target training pace while doing aerobic exercises. When you monitor your heartbeats per minute with an electronic device, you can accurately predict when you have reached that speed.

Your target training scale depends on several factors. It is primarily based on your age. A person in his twenties would have a target training scale between 150 and 130 beats per minute. A person in his forties would have a target training scale ranging between 110 and 90 beats a minute.

For every twenty years you age, your ideal pulse scale will drop by twenty contractions a minute. The cardiac muscle of a young child contracts almost 200 times a minute when he is running.

Your ideal pulse scale is a general guideline. Where you fall in your age scale is strongly influenced by how healthy your cardiovascular system is. If you are a veteran exerciser, you will have a stronger cardiovascular system that will not need to work as hard. If you are just beginning your first exercise program, your heart will contract more often every minute.

When you are new to working out, you should not try to go too fast to strengthen your cardiovascular system. Trying to sustain a fast pace can result in breathing problems or stop your heart. If you ignore how quickly your heart is contracting, you will feel winded and ill while exercising.

Not making your cardiac muscle work hard enough is almost as bad as working it too hard. If you do not speed up your cardiovascular pace sufficiently during aerobic exercise, you will not fully benefit from it. If you keep track of your pulse with a monitor, you can quickly tell if you need to exercise harder to stay in your ideal pulse scale.

You can try to check your cardiac muscle contraction speed at your carotid artery or on your wrist while you are working out. It can be difficult to find your pulse and count the beats while exercising. To instantly access your cardiac muscle contraction rate, use a device that does it for you. When you can see a digital readout of your pulse, you can quickly modify your workout if need be to maintain it in the ideal training pace. Knowing how to train properly with a heart rate monitor will help you get the most out of every workout.

Written by Travis Brown

What is a Heart Rate Monitor?

Sometimes called a cardiac monitor, a heart monitor is an electronic device that is used to continuously track your heart rate. Using this information you can determine the target heart rate at which you will maximize the cardiac benefits from your exercise. There are more complex versions of heart monitors which physicians use to detect any signs of deterioration in your heart functioning and make the necessary adjustments immediately.

Types of Heart Monitors

Today a wide range of heart rate monitors are produced – designed to cater for the specific requirements of different types of individuals.

Some heart monitors are primarily designed for weight loss programs – allowing the person to keep close monitoring of their heart rate during exercise and dieting to ensure they are not pushing their weight loss regime too hard.

Other kinds of heart rate monitors are designed for use by athletes in training and for people regularly involved in fitness programs.

Most heart rate monitors operate with a battery and emit wireless/electromagnetic waves.

Most personal use heart rate monitors can be portable – such as having the monitor fixed to your body by a strap and the display on your wrist – and not interfere with your movements, particularly if you are exercising.

Other types are built into standard exercise equipment like treadmills and exercise bicycles. In these situations you can read your heart rate by holding on to the handle of the equipment and checking the displayed result.

Selecting Your Suitable Heart Rate Monitor

Monitors with Chest Straps:

Heart monitors that come with chest straps are usually the most accurate. You fix the chest strap around your chest, a few centimeters below your breast. Fixed into the strap is the device which can detect the electrical activity of your heart and transmit that to the display – the same process as your physician uses when you are hooked up to an ECG machine. While, for most people, the simplest form of display straps to your wrist like a watch. There are some heart rate monitors which provide their results as an audio message through earphones;

Finger tip monitors:

An alternative are those heart rate monitors which fit over your finger tip, and are usually connected by a wire to a display screen. These are not only generally less accurate than the chest strap type, but are in no way as convenient in terms of their portability.

Advanced Features of Heart Monitor

The basic, lower-end heart rate monitors usually display only your heart rate and some show your elapsed exercise time as well. This does not provide you with sufficient information you will need if you are trying to maximize the benefits of your exercise. The models in the higher end range provide a range of additional features but these come at a price.

Some of the additional features available are:

• heart rate zone alarms – which sound a buzzer alert if your heart rate begins to fall outside the target zone rate you have set;

• timers – which act like stop watches and alarm clocks;

• some monitors even calculate the number of calories you have burned – calculated on your heart rate and the time you have been exercising.

Should You Buy a Heart Rate Monitor?

Heart rate monitors can be expensive, particularly if you want to buy one of the high-end models with all those advanced features. If you decide to buy one of the cheaper, basic heart rate monitors you should be aware that, like any cheaper electronic equipment, some of those cheaper models may be of such poor quality that they are only providing you with inaccurate information about your heart rate.

By: John Vanse