Olympian Heart Health: Would You Get a Gold Medal?

What happened to “No pain, no gain?”

What constitutes a sufficient level of physical activity? Do you have to exercise to exhaustion like an Olympic athlete or is just breaking a light sweat enough?

You can decide for yourself whether an activity is sufficiently stimulating to the cardiovascular system if you raise and sustain your heart rate to 70% of your age-predicted maximum heart rate or greater.

This seems like an awfully complex rule, but it’s really simple to calculate. To get your 70% target the minimum heart rate you would like to achieve and sustain, start with the number 220 (maximum heart rate in humans under normal conditions) and subtract your age; multiply the result by 0.7 (70%). This will give you the approximate minimum heart rate required to yield the sorts of benefits listed earlier. (This applies to both men and women.)  For example, if you’re 50 years old:

220 – 50 = 170

170 x 0.7 = 119 beats per minute

You therefore need to maintain your heart rate at 119 beats per minute or greater. A heart rate of 119 is easy to attain by a brisk walk, light to moderate-effort biking, walking on your treadmill with a modest incline (say, 3% grade), raking leaves, singles tennis, ballroom dancing, etc.

Measure your heart rate by feeling the pulse in your wrist (just below the base of your thumb). Count the number of heart beats in 15 seconds and multiply times 4, and this yields heart beats per minute. You can also measure heart rate by using one of the many heart rate monitors available today or that come built in with exercise machines. These devices are reasonably accurate (as long as the interface between hand and contact is moist). If you have cause to doubt a device’s accuracy, just compare the heart rate read-out to the value you obtain by taking your pulse. You can, of course, exceed this 70% level (provided your doctor agrees). If you were striving towards Olympic medals, you’d have to go much further. But to achieve substantial benefit for heart health, these simple goals can do the trick. 

The “no pain, no gain” mantra does not apply to people who are looking for heart health. This is meant for people whose aim is to achieve high levels of fitness for competition, or other such purposes that have little to do with heart health. Much of the benefit from exercise comes by devoting sufficient time to your efforts. For people with otherwise sedentary lives, two hours a week of a 70% effort is the minimum, preferably divided up into three or four sessions. This amount provides 90% of the cholesterol/blood pressure/anti-inflammatory benefits achievable with exercise. Less than this and you might not obtain the improvements you desire. More than this, and there are modest additional increments of up to 10%

Be inspired by the superhuman performances of the Olympic athletes, but you don’t have to follow their lead. The grunting, straining, and extraordinary effort of an Olympian are simply not necessary for you to feel better, lose weight, or help correct your lipids/cholesterol patterns.