Using a Heart Rate Monitor

Finding Your True Maximum Heart Rate

The easy way to find your maximum heart rate - the figure that all aerobic training is based on - is just to subtract your age from the number, 220. Sadly, it is only an approximation. In my case, for example, that formula gives me a max of 147 but I know, just from looking down at my heart rate monitor when I'm going nuts, I know that my real max is 170 bpm (Actually I confirmed that number at a recent Cooper Institute stress test...one of the rare stress tests that takes you to your max). What to do? Well, the number you get off your monitor when you're going flat out is the Real One...the one you should use. Indeed, once you get into great shape, you should push the envelope and get your heart rate up as high as you can, just to see what the real max is.

The best way to do it? Intervals. You slowly get your heart rate up to say 80% and then really hit it for, say, 60 seconds...go as hard as you can go. Then sink back to 80 or 85% for a bit, followed by another short sprint. If you do three or four of those in a row, you'll get your heart rate way up there. The tippety top number you see on the monitor, just for a second, is your real max. Congratulations. But keep testing....it goes down a little bit every year. It's one of those aging things that IS on the biological time line...one of the things that keeps you from being a serious ball player at 50. Sorry.

By the way, there is another formula that is said to be better for people in good shape: 205 minus half your age. That's still too low for me and the Cooper Institute, which used to use it, no longer recommends that approach. Best advice: find your real max by going for it (assuming you're in great shape...no sense killing yourself just to find out your max).