Heart rate (HR) is the number of heartbeats per minute. Heart rate is essential for the proper functioning and assessment of your heart.
Read on to find out how to correctly calculate and find out your maximum heart rate.
Maximum Heart Rate
The maximum heart rate (MHR) is the maximum number of beats that the heart can reach during heavy physical exertion, and a person should not step over this value. The general widely accepted recommendation.
The MHR is used to determine, control and monitor intensity of your workout, and determines the limit on the number of beats per minute that your heart can reach without compromising your health.
However, have you ever managed to achieve the value of your maximum heart rate during training or physical assessment test? Also, the MHR is an untrained indicator, However, it decreases with age.
Maximum heart rate is determined in two ways:
- The first is by recording the highest heart rate obtained after very intense training.
- The second is by using formulas that estimate the MHR.
In practice the brain will most often slow down a person long before he develops maximum exertion. The accuracy of formulas you may find in many sports blogs or magazines may have even less accurate indicators.
In general, the determination of maximum heart rate has a long history. And the first attempts date back to the end of 1938 when it began using the formula “212-0.77 x age.”
Much later, in 2019, researchers suggested that the formula is more likely “208.75-0.7 x age” and would better determine MHR.
There are also more than 40 formulas for determining MHR depending on various factors such as age and gender. However, many other factors of particular organisms are not covered by these formulas.
Analysis of all formulas for predicting MHR shows most age-based equations have large errors. With a deviation up or down by more than 10 heartbeats per minute.
In conclusion, there is no exact method for determining the maximum heart rate for a particular person. If MHR is estimated, case-specific formulas should be used.
However, the most acceptable and general equation is HRmax = 205.8-0.685 x age, Although here mistakes can also be significant.
So what to do?
Use a combination of RPE and heart rate, or, even better start physical activity and based on your heart rate data. Determine the lactate threshold with some degree of accuracy. This indicator of the lactate threshold and the heart rate. Corresponding to it will be better for determining your heart rate zones.
Photo by Artur Łuczka