Resting heart rate

Like a lot of mere mortals, I currently register around 60 bpm. My father, who is 48 and does inline
racing, consistently reads at 40 bpm. He's clearly in much better shape than I am. Is resting heart
rate really that telling of an indicator of fitness, though? I heard the average out of the Tour de France
riders was about 50. OTOH, I've been told that at his peak, Miguel Indurain's resting heart rate was
29 bpm. That's the same as the resting heart rate of a full-grown elephant.

-Sonarrat.

"Sonarrat" <sonarrat@postmark.net> wrote in message news:vn2h1mjkod8d22@corp.supernews.com...
> Like a lot of mere mortals, I currently register around 60 bpm. My father,
who
> is 48 and does inline racing, consistently reads at 40 bpm. He's clearly
in
> much better shape than I am. Is resting heart rate really that telling of
an
> indicator of fitness, though?


Dumbass -

No.

I am at 42 and am pure Masters Fattie.

BTW, the max is lower too.

Hi there,

Well, yes and no. The absolute value isn't really a good indicator as it has a lot o do with genetic predisposition.

It's a good indication though when following your resting heart rate over time. When your training and improving your condition you'll find that your individual resting heart rate will go down over time, indicating conditional improvement.

So to go short: the only real comparison is to your own previous values.

Cheers and happy training,

Grouse

I heard the average out of the Tour de France riders was
> about 50. OTOH, I've been told that at his peak, Miguel Indurain's
resting
> heart rate was 29 bpm.

My resting is 37 bpm, and I'm 15 pounds overweight, and can barely run around the block. I don't
know what it indicates, I would be interested in the answer also. If it indicates nothing, then
why do people talk about it? Why does it impress the nurse at the yearly physical?

In article <ULgcb.1769$RW4.1140@newsread4.news.pas.earthlink.net>, "Callistus Valerius"
<jazzyboss@hotmail.com> wrote:

> I heard the average out of the Tour de France riders was
> > about 50. OTOH, I've been told that at his peak, Miguel Indurain's
> resting
> > heart rate was 29 bpm.
>
> My resting is 37 bpm, and I'm 15 pounds overweight, and can barely run around the block. I
> don't know what it indicates, I would be interested in the answer also. If it indicates
> nothing, then why do people talk about it? Why does it impress the nurse at the yearly
> physical?

The simplest of a rest HR is that it is a coarse indicator of the size and strength of your heart.
If you have a low rest HR, it suggests that when you are exerting yourself, your heart will be able
to flow much more blood (because there tends to be much less variance between max HRs among people;
rest HRs are mostly about 35-80 bpm in average humans, which is a big variance. Peak HRs tend to
vary from 170-200 bpm, a lesser range both proportionally and absolutely).

Okay, but that's all very person-dependent. My father and I have similar rest HRs, but his max HR is
notably lower than mine, much more so than the age difference would suggest. It's a genetic thing.

The best training use of rest HR is to track it regularly, noting instances when it is above what
you usually read. This is a typical indicator of overtraining, so that's when you know you need to
back off for a few days.

Other than that, your rest HR tends to go down as fitness increases, since you're training your
heart to do more work for more time, which naturally makes it bigger and stronger, and thus able to
flow more blood per stroke. Since exercise doesn't make you use appreciably more blood when at rest,
this means your heart needs to do less work, and so it pumps less often.

--
Ryan Cousineau, rcousine@sfu.ca http://www.sfu.ca/~rcousine President, Fabrizio Mazzoleni Fan Club

Ryan Cousineau wrote:
> Other than that, your rest HR tends to go down as fitness increases, since you're training your
> heart to do more work for more time, which naturally makes it bigger and stronger, and thus able
> to flow more blood per stroke. Since exercise doesn't make you use appreciably more blood when at
> rest, this means your heart needs to do less work, and so it pumps less often.

"Tends to" go down?

I've been thinking of preaching the wisdom of tracking resting HR to my general-population exercise
class attendees, but want to relay correct info. Under what conditions does declining RHR NOT
indicate better fitness (besides over-trained situations - and death)?

--
--
Lynn Wallace http://www.xmission.com/~lawall "I'm not proud. We really haven't done everything we
could to protect our customers. Our products just aren't engineered for security." --Microsoft VP in
charge of Windows OS Development, Brian Valentine.

"Raptor" <me@attbi.com> wrote in message news:3F71BCC1.70009@attbi.com...
> Ryan Cousineau wrote:
> > Other than that, your rest HR tends to go down as fitness increases, since you're training your
> > heart to do more work for more time, which naturally makes it bigger and stronger, and thus able
> > to flow more blood per stroke. Since exercise doesn't make you use appreciably more blood when
> > at rest, this means your heart needs to do less work, and so it pumps less often.
>
> "Tends to" go down?
>
> I've been thinking of preaching the wisdom of tracking resting HR to my general-population
> exercise class attendees, but want to relay correct info. Under what conditions does declining RHR
> NOT indicate better fitness (besides over-trained situations - and death)?

When it comes to health, blood pressure is a better indicator.

In article <3F71BCC1.70009@attbi.com>, Raptor <me@attbi.com> wrote:

> Ryan Cousineau wrote:
> > Other than that, your rest HR tends to go down as fitness increases, since you're training your
> > heart to do more work for more time, which naturally makes it bigger and stronger, and thus able
> > to flow more blood per stroke. Since exercise doesn't make you use appreciably more blood when
> > at rest, this means your heart needs to do less work, and so it pumps less often.
>
> "Tends to" go down?

Bad Ryan. Nassty weasel-words....

> I've been thinking of preaching the wisdom of tracking resting HR to my general-population
> exercise class attendees, but want to relay correct info. Under what conditions does declining RHR
> NOT indicate better fitness (besides over-trained situations - and death)?

I'm not an expert in sport science or physiology (but you got a computer problem, I'm your guy).
Some people have a naturally low RHR. I have no idea what happens to them when they exercise a lot.
It's also possible for a low RHR to indicate an abnormally enlarged heart, I think.

That said, I'm not aware of any formula that you can use to correlate RHR declines with fitness
levels. As always, the best metric of that is a performance test against what you're training: 20k
TT, number of push-ups to failure, pitching speed, whatever. RHR reduction is an interesting
side-effect and a fun locker-room brag-number, but little more.

--
Ryan Cousineau, rcousine@sfu.ca http://www.sfu.ca/~rcousine President, Fabrizio Mazzoleni Fan Club

The other thing that makes it hard to make any sense of is that it appears to be somewhat variable with age as to how quickly it responds to the exercise (has anyone looked into this?)

As an 18 year old, I trained (for swimming) between 25 and 30 hours a week, which included lots of pool work, a bit of running and gym time. My resting heart rate then was low 50's - I think about 53 or so from memory.

Time went by, got an office job, put on a heap of weight etc, RHR goes up to 65 or so.

Six months ago decided I was sick of being fat, started putting in 30 minutes of high intensity exercise per day (avg 160+ or so for the half hour). Dropped 30 pounds, but more interestingly, RHR dropped to 42. But I'm nowhere near as fit (overall) as I was when swimming, as I'm doing 3 hours a week of exercise instead of ten times that! Maybe something to do with the fact that the 3 hours was all high intensity, where obviously not all of the 30 was?

"Raptor" <me@attbi.com> wrote in message news:3F71BCC1.70009@attbi.com...
> Ryan Cousineau wrote:
> > Other than that, your rest HR tends to go down as fitness increases, since you're training your
> > heart to do more work for more time,
which
> > naturally makes it bigger and stronger, and thus able to flow more
blood
> > per stroke. Since exercise doesn't make you use appreciably more
blood
> > when at rest, this means your heart needs to do less work, and so it pumps less often.
>
> "Tends to" go down?
>
> I've been thinking of preaching the wisdom of tracking resting HR to
my
> general-population exercise class attendees, but want to relay correct info. Under what conditions
> does declining RHR NOT indicate better fitness (besides over-trained situations - and death)?

Look up Bradycardia and Chronotropic Incompetence. Both of these can be indicators of serious heart
conditions.

Phil Holman

I'd tend to agree. Overall, its the change in your RHR that is telling, but even then its tough to
say. In general, the best of the best endurance athletes have very low RHR's, but exceptions exist.
Case in point, Frank Shorter, Olympic gold medalist runner who was about 76. Overall, though,
changes in HR is affected most by nervous input. Typically, the big drop most of us see in the first
weeks of training is due to increase parasympathetic input - the part of the nervouse system that
controls stuff like digestion), rather than increased heart size. In reality, the changes we see in
the heart and heart rate are similar to those seen with weight lifting; FYI there's little increase
in muscle size in the first 10 weeks of weight lifting, with most strenght gains occurring due to
nervous system changes.

Chris Harnish

Ryan Cousineau <rcousine@sfu.ca> wrote in message
news:<rcousine-A1688E.08275924092003@morgoth.sfu.ca>...
> In article <ULgcb.1769$RW4.1140@newsread4.news.pas.earthlink.net>, "Callistus Valerius"
> <jazzyboss@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I heard the average out of the Tour de France riders was
> > > about 50. OTOH, I've been told that at his peak, Miguel Indurain's
> resting
> > > heart rate was 29 bpm.
> >
> > My resting is 37 bpm, and I'm 15 pounds overweight, and can barely run around the block. I
> > don't know what it indicates, I would be interested in the answer also. If it indicates
> > nothing, then why do people talk about it? Why does it impress the nurse at the yearly
> > physical?
>
> The simplest of a rest HR is that it is a coarse indicator of the size and strength of your heart.
> If you have a low rest HR, it suggests that when you are exerting yourself, your heart will be
> able to flow much more blood (because there tends to be much less variance between max HRs among
> people; rest HRs are mostly about 35-80 bpm in average humans, which is a big variance. Peak HRs
> tend to vary from 170-200 bpm, a lesser range both proportionally and absolutely).
>
> Okay, but that's all very person-dependent. My father and I have similar rest HRs, but his max
> HR is notably lower than mine, much more so than the age difference would suggest. It's a
> genetic thing.
>
> The best training use of rest HR is to track it regularly, noting instances when it is above what
> you usually read. This is a typical indicator of overtraining, so that's when you know you need to
> back off for a few days.
>
> Other than that, your rest HR tends to go down as fitness increases, since you're training your
> heart to do more work for more time, which naturally makes it bigger and stronger, and thus able
> to flow more blood per stroke. Since exercise doesn't make you use appreciably more blood when at
> rest, this means your heart needs to do less work, and so it pumps less often.

Phil Holman wrote:

>> I've been thinking of preaching the wisdom of tracking resting HR to
> my
>> general-population exercise class attendees, but want to relay correct info. Under what
>> conditions does declining RHR NOT indicate better fitness (besides over-trained situations - and
>> death)?
>
> Look up Bradycardia and Chronotropic Incompetence. Both of these can be indicators of serious
> heart conditions.

Look up hypothyroidism too...

A low resting HR may also be due to some medications. An example is beta-blockers which are fairly commonly used those with either heart or blood pressure problems.

Also, the heart's "conduction system" (which allows the heart beat to be in a regular rhythm and to beat in a coordinated manner i.e. atrial then ventricular contraction) can have problems that lead to a slow HR.