The right pulse when exercise may help you get in the weight loss zone faster and long for better results from your workout. Target heart rate formula makes it possible to not only find the best heart rate to exercise at to burn fat but may help you find the exercise intensity most suited for you.
What is my target heart rate?
The fat burning heart rate is the heart rate that your body can burn fat the easiest. Knowing how to calculate target heart rate puts you in the best position for weight loss helping exercise more efficiently.
Just by checking your heart rate while you jog, you can stay in the fat burning zone getting the best results out of your aerobic workout all by paying attention to your heart rate. Find your target heart rate.
In this healthy Slism, we introduce ways to calculate your heart rate easy while discussing the exercise intensity that you can burn fat the most exercising at.
Quick Heart Rate
- Exercise intensity and your pulse
- The right intensity for burning fat
- DIY Target Heart Rate calculations
- Exercise tips to stay in the zone
Calculation Your Target Heart Rate For Fat Burning
Why do people measure their pulse anyway? Usually it is the case that on a regular checkup, your doctor does it as a rudimentary check. On the other hand, you may just do it for kicks seeing how being startled brings up your heart rate.
When you are exercising on a diet one way you know you are exercising at the right pace for weight loss is your Target Heart Rate. By calculating your target heart rate helps you burn more fat exercise with optimal workout intensity.
Aerobic exercise compared to anaerobic exercise helps you burn fat. However low intensity aerobic exercise may not be what you want if you are really looking for an effective way to burn fat.
Your heart rate and the intensity you exercise at are interrelated. Depending on the exercise intensity you workout with you heart rate may vary drastically. To lower you heart rate bringing down your pulse you needs to slow down your pace. Having too low or too high a pulse can get you booted out of the target heart rate zone.
In order to find the optimal workout intensity when carrying out aerobic exercise, you need to attain a firm grasp of the middle ground in exercise intensity finding a target heart rate that is right for you to burn fat more effectively.
Fat Burning Workout Intensity and Target Heart Rate
The optimal workout intensity for the most effective aerobic exercise workout is between 40 and 60 percent your maximum workout intensity. For a point of reference, this intensity of working out can be attained doing activities such as bowling and swimming. Just so you know exercising above or below this degree of intensity makes it harder to burn fat.
| EXERCISE INTENSITY (BPM) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 40% Low Intensity |
50% Medium Intensity |
60% High Intensity |
||
| AGE | 20 | 122 | 135 | 148 |
| 30 | 118 | 130 | 142 | |
| 40 | 114 | 125 | 136 | |
| 50 | 110 | 120 | 130 | |
| 60 | 106 | 115 | 124 | |
* BPM, Beats per Minute
* RHR, Resting Heart Rate
Examples
- Low Intensity Exercise (Walking Bowling, Light Frisbee)
- Medium Intensity Exercise (Aerobics, Softball, Calisthenics, Volleyball)
- High Intensity Exercise (Swimming, Badminton, Running, Jumping Rope, Soccer)
Calculating Your Own Target Heart Rate by Hand
Here we are going to show you just how to find the target heart rate fit for your level of exercise to help you understand just the right exercise intensity you should be working out at to burn fat exercising.
Using the Karvonen Heart Rate Formula
Calculated your target heart rate using your maximum heart rate (MHR), exercise intensity (INT), and your resting heart rate (RHR) described by the Karvonen Method for calculating target heart rate.
(1)THR = (MHR – RHR )× INT + RHR
(2)INT = (HEARTRATE – RHR ) ÷ (MHR – RHR ) × 100
Example Target Heart Rate Calculations
Consider the case of a 52 year old woman with a resting heart rate of 70 BPM.
To calculate the maximum heart rate, we use the formula:
MHR = 220 - AGE that means the results we are looking for is
MHR = 220 - 52 = 168.
That gives us a maximum heart rate of 168 BMP.
Note that this person may not be inclined to intense exercise so we will choose low intensity exercise as an exercise intensity of 40%. Therefore,
THR = (168 – 70) × 0.4 + 70 = 109
So if this person wants to workout at 40 percent exercise intensity doing aerobic exercises, she should keep here heart rate at 109 BPM while exercising. Note that it is preferable to maintain this heart rate throughout the workout for best results.
130 BPM! -Determine Exercise Intensity from Your Heart Rate
Using the same scenario as above (AGE = 52; RHR = 70) and the fact that her heart rate while exercise when up to 130 beats per minute, we can approximate the exercise intensity of the workout she is doing.
Using the second formula in the Karvonen Method we find exercise intensity to be as follows.
INT = (130 – 70) ÷ (220 – 52 – 70) × 100 = 61%
What this tells us is that the intensity of her workout may be too high. To fix this a lower intensity exercise can be done instead or pace can be slowed down slightly.
The method described above can be used to approximate the instantaneous exercise intensity of your workout. It is particularly useful when you are looking for ways to spot check yourself mid exercise to avoid wasted effort working out too hard.
Although the Karvonen Method described in this column works fine if you are the kind of person who prefers to do all calculation by hand. Just so you know there are wrist watches and other devices that can be used to measure your heart rate mid exercise.
The Best Way to Burn Fat Is Exercising At an Intensity You Can Maintain
Once you attain a firm grasp on exercise intensity, you will be reaching your target heart rate in no time guaranteed.
Matching your inclination to exercise with the workout intensity that fits your needs is the best approach to exercising for weight loss helping your burn more fat.
After reaching your target heart rate, you should be feeling in the zone. That is to say if you keep it up you can get all the benefits that exercising in the fat burning zone gives you if you do it right.
Reaching a heart rate to burn fat is important but there are other benefits to exercising at the right workout intensity such as lifelong health. Find out and try to reach your target heart rate the next time you go out exercising.
