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Heart rate monitors are a useful tool for planning, executing, and tracking your training. By tracking your heart rate throughout a workout, you can get a more accurate idea of the real intensity of the activity versus the perceived, and can adjust your current or future workouts to accordingly. Not all heart rate monitors are the same however, and they aren’t anything more than a tool to be more informed about the progression of your training. Smartphones can do almost everything now and indeed, some of the newest phones include a small finger scanner that can detect your heart rate. Watches have also evolved to track your heart rate from your wrist without the chest strap that used to be required, though the top models still use a chest strap, albeit with improved technology. The difference between the three styles really lies in the accuracy of the measurement. While it’s nifty to be able to see what your heart rate is on your phone, it can’t track your heart rate throughout a workout, only at discrete points in time when you choose to scan it and to be effective for training, it’s best to have a picture of what your heart rate looked like throughout the workout. Watches that measure your pulse through your wrist generally use reflected infrared or LED light to measure changes in the size of capillaries as an indication of a heartbeat. While these watches will track your heart rate throughout a workout, they tend to not be as accurate as the models that use a chest strap since you move and bounce while you exercise. Ultimately it offers only a rough picture of your pulse throughout. For an accurate idea of your training intensity, newer dedicated heart rate monitors with chest straps use conductive fabric and microprocessors that analyze your EKG, giving a detailed and accurate picture of your entire workout. What does using a heart rate monitor get you? First and foremost, a heart rate monitor gives you the ability to track your training more accurately. Heart rate monitors use versions of the 5 training zones that most athletes utilize, so you can begin to build an accurate picture of how much time you spend in each zone and how effective a given period, week, or workout might have been for you. A heart rate monitor can also help you to hit your target intensity zone for a given workout. This works in both directions; it can help you to tone it down on your long level 2 endurance training if you start to push a little hard, or it can let you know that you need to push even harder to make it to your target L4 zone on a set of intervals. Tracking your heart rate over a period of time can also give you a picture of your overall fitness. As your training pays off, your resting heart rate should drop, and you will find yourself covering more ground and going faster, but at the same intensity. Conversely, a sudden spike in your resting heart rate may indicate that your training load is adding up and that you need to focus a bit more on recovery. A heart rate monitor won’t make you fitter, but it can give you a lot of valuable information that allows you to create a more informed training plan. _____ Questions? Comments? Share your thoughts here on the RMI Blog!