a question about heart rate. max HR.
 

my brother had a physical. the docs got alarmed at his low HR, and ordered a barrage of test.

he also bought a HR monitor, so that meant i bought one as well ;)

anyways, 220 minus my age gives me a 173 today (it was 174 yesterday! :))

grinding up a huge mountain on my MTB, i noted a 168 HR. i was breathing heavy, but not crazy. i could still talk somewhat..granted i was talking to myself. is that max HR thing even a good guideline? i imagine a really overweight smoker my same age would be passed out at 168, no?

is there a more accurate way of finding my max without making myself, faint or vomit, or both? do i even need to care?

Sound about right for a max.
You do not want to run at max.
80% of it, perhaps.
A really overweight smoker your age might be dead.

I'm 33, so 220 - 33 = 187

I've exceeded that by a few bpm on several occaissions and I didn't spontaneously combust. "Max" seems to me to be more of a theoretical guideline, not a hard limit. Having said that, it's probably a good idea to stay below that theoretical max.

I thought a low resting HR was good.

50's-60's would typically be "good" for an avg adult. Lower than that might need a good explanation or be investigated to satisfaction.

220 - age is a very "approximate" formula for max HR. Worthless I think. Better to simply go by what you observe in yourself.

I'm 50 y/o, have seen as high as 190 on a bike, didn't puke or faint or notice anything wrong, so I figure my max HR is something above that and that is as close as I need to know.

During running or biking I routinely hit 170. Your 168 seems perfectly okay to me.

Lower resting HR is good. I'm about 45, though have seen as low as 41. That is very fitness dependent - you can lower your resting HR a great deal by getting in shape, as you're proving now.

Time for HR to drop after exercise is important. We had a thread about it, worth a search, I think aigel talked about many bpm drop you want to see per minute after stopping exertion.

What happens when you exceed max heart heart rate going up a hill. I don't have a monitor, but my chest is beating out of my chest and can't talk sometimes. One time, I started to see starts all around like if I was about to faint after a long 5 mile climb chasing someone.

I started using a heart monitor while riding last week. It's very cool, wish I'd done it sooner.

Now when I think the headwind is too stong and slowing me down, I can look down and tell if it's really the wind or just me wimping out :)

Once I'm warmed up I try to keep it about 150. I hit a max of 171 the other day during a sprint to 32 mph on flat ground. I'm 46 so I guess my max should be 174.

Think about it like an engine. You rev it up to blow it out, and it should rev freely. It should also come back to a reasonable resting pace in a fairly brief period of time. You can have a fast or slow resting heart rate for a number of reasons, some not so good as others.

The 220-your age is a very rough approximation of max heart rate. There are a bunch of other formulas used. 214-(0.8x age) is another common one.
You will find you may have different max rates in different activities.
Want to find your max heart rate on a bike. Do a 5mile hill climb as fast as you can, so that at the top you think your pancreas is about to fall out. Check your heart monitor for your highest rate.
I am 60 and will often be in the 170's trying to keep up with the pack.
The formulas tend to be too conservative for active folks, and thus of little value in training
Gary

so that is the danger for a person with bad pipes? the HR never gets to come down to a nice resting heart rate. that is why it gets so enlarged right? super enlarged?

a pro athletes heart gets bigger too..but it is the resting period.

You didn't say how low your bros rate was. When I was running my resting rate was like 45.
Miguel Indurain's RHR was in the high 20's when he was at his peak conditioning.

Happy birthday Vash.

You can do a stress test to determine max. HR. The rest is just guestimation. Your heart has a built in rev-limiter. It will not go faster than what it can support. Max HR really seems to be important if you are a pro athlete, so you can design your exercises to be precisely related to your max. HR, i.e. 80%.

Resting heart rate can be an indicator if you have a crappy pump. If it is weak, it has to run at higher rate to move the min. amount of blood needed.

If you are hardcore into cardio, i.e. long runs, resting heart rate is also used to see if you over-exerted yourself. If your heart is tired, you will have higher than usual resting HR the next day / morning. Many athletes track their resting heart rate for this reason, to make sure they do not over-train.

And yes, your 1 min HR recovery rate after stopping exercise is a very good indicator of fitness and cardio health, it should be 25 or more, IIRC. This tells you how fast your heart can catch up with the body after exercise.

My resting HR is in the mid-high 40s, my recovery rate over 40 and I can see over 170 in a race (5k run) for sustained periods. Jogging at 10 mi/mi in the flats in cool weather, I run about a 120 bmp average. I do worry sometimes, that I have too much heart volume with such low resting rate and at low exertion levels. It is great now, but once you are old and your muscle tissue wanes, it can lead to issues.

G

What kind of issues?

Back in the late 70s and through the 80s when I was seriously racing bicycles as an over 35 year old veteran, my pulse at waking would be 35 or so. During a work out ride I would stress it 4 or 5 times an hour up to 180 to 200 for short periods, usually until I would see stars or something. For the last several years of that madness I had a pulse watch that I had bought in Hong Kong at the Wings bicycle shop and would record max and min. When I won my first and only road race in Ensenada MX, I later checked and it said the maximum had been 215 for 9 seconds! Whew, no wonder I don't really remember the finish very much.

The point is if you stress the heart muscles they will get stronger if given enough time to recover and then stress it again but keep a close eye on it.

Happy Birthday!!

Oh and that heart-rate equation is just a rough guideline.

I can't imagine anyone taking those max HR formulas seriously. As already mentioned, it depends on conditioning, extra weight, smoking (less of a factor now days), and your individual HR characteristics. So I wouldn't pay any attention to the formula. Just track your HR during and after different activities, in the morning, after you eat, how fast it recovers to normal after exertion, etc. It shouldn't take too long to figure out what your heart is doing and can do.

215 - holy moly. You were 5 years old!

I'm 49. 6', 170 pounds. My heart rate runs high when exercising. I do a variety of exercises through the week - I cycle through treadmill, elliptical, recumbent exercise bike, jump rope, street running, trail running, martial arts, etc. While my resting pulse is in the mid-50s, it can jump to 170 or 180 with moderate exertion.

I went to the cardiologist just to have things checked out. Ended up with a nuclear stress test where ultimately, they said everything looked okay. The heart doc said some people just have a higher pulse during exercise and not to worry about it.