What Your Heart Rate Can Tell You About Your Fitness

If you wear a smartwatch or fitness tracker, you likely already have access to a steady stream of data about your heart health.

Beyond basic heart rate monitoring, smart watches and fitness trackers can also measure and track heart rate zones, heart rate variability and heart rate trends.

This information can be powerful for your health and fitness, if you’re open to experimenting with different intensity levels during exercise — and if you understand the limits of the data.

To make the data useful, Kathryn Larson, a cardiologist at the Sports Cardiology Clinic at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., asks patients about their health and fitness goals. “The discussion changes a lot based on what that patient or athlete wants to do with that data,” she said.

For people looking to develop an exercise habit, heart-rate data can be a great tool for understanding how their fitness levels change over time. For more experienced athletes, heart rate zone training can help improve speed and endurance.

How to measure your heart rate

To measure your heart rate without a wearable device, find your pulse in your neck or wrist. Count the number of beats you detect in 15 seconds, and multiply that number by four.

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