Avena Originals Articles
Understanding Your Heart Rate
Understanding Your Heart Rate
Taking care of your heart is always a good thing. For athletes this is especially important. The average adult has a resting heart rate of around 60-90 beats per minute. This gives an indication of how ‘strong’ your heart is. Ideally, the lower the number of beats per minute, the stronger your heart muscle is, making it more efficient at delivering blood and oxygen to all areas of your body. You can use your heart rate for any type of training to help you maximize the effectiveness of your workouts, whether it is for weight loss, conditioning, or just for fun. Some athletes can even condition their bodies to the point where their resting heart rate is well below the average. Lance Armstrong, American Tour de France cyclist, was once noted to have a resting heart rate in the 30 beat per minute range. Lance’s heart is stronger as well as being significantly larger than most other people’s hearts. Per pump (stroke, beat), his trained heart can put out a greater volume of blood than an ‘average Joe’s’ heart. At rest, both Lance and ‘Joe’ need to move the same volume of blood around per minute to keep everything oxygenated. But each beat of Lance's heart is going to move twice as much blood as a beat from Joe's. As a result, Lance's heart only needs to beat half as often to keep things oxygenated. This is common for those who are training extensively for endurance sports.
Many Olympic-caliber athletes have low resting heart rates. This happens because these athletes train extensively. Just like any other muscle, the heart can be trained and can grow in size to accommodate increased demand. When Lance is sprinting as fast as he can, his heart is beating a lot less often than a non-athlete’s heart would be in sprinting.
However, it is pumping out more blood per beat, and therefore he can go farther and faster than a non-athlete can since his muscles remain better oxygenated, produce less lactic acid, and take longer to fatigue.
Use your heart rate to increase energy output while training. Here is a chart to help you ‘be in the zone’ you wish to be in and to maintain while training.
Remember: Your blood is what transports all the healthy nutrients within your body. It is also where many pathogens are present and how they travel throughout the body. Keeping your blood healthy and full of strong white blood cells is the best prevention. |
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