How to Choose a Fitness Heart Rate Monitor
Heart monitors are used by many people who use them to watch the rate of their heart during exercise. Exercise heart rate monitors are electronic devices that provide an easy to read numerical display of the heart rate. As you exercise you can aim for a target heart rate to ensure that the workout session is effective. Fairly basic heart monitors are used for this purpose, more complex ones are used by physicians to allow them to monitor various types of heart conditions.
At the moment heart rate monitors are readily available and are made to cater for an individuals specific needs. They can be intended to help you to lose weight or for use during fitness training.. They may be worn like a wrist watch or they can be built into exercise machines such as exercise bikes or treadmills. Simple heart monitors that are very easy to use, with large displays and a timer are available from approximately $35. Make sure you check that you can change the battery easily. Some monitors do not allow you to do it yourself. Several simple monitors also include maximum and minimum rates as well as the average rate throughout your exercise session.
Slightly more expensive monitors have lots more functions which may include tracking calories burned, the intensity of your workout and how much time you spend in each heart rate zone. A few may include weekly summaries of your workouts. These kinds of monitors are about $90.
The very best models are heart rate monitors such as the Garmin Forerunner Sports Watch and the Polar FT60 which include USB connections to easily transfer all your workout data to your computer. You can also add a Garmin foot pod to the Garmin Forerunner Sports Watch to to make a combined heart rate monitor and pedometer and monitor your speed and distance as well as calories burned. You can set the Polar FT60 for weekly targets and to track progress. If you are a serious athlete these multi feature heart rate monitors are excellent but much more expensive at around $200.
Heart rates are monitored by two methods, using a pulse meter on the finger or a chest strap. Heart rate monitors using a chest strap give a more accurate reading as long as the chest strap is fitted properly and at all times it remains close to the body. These types monitor the heart similarly to an ECG machine and the data is transmitted to a device, which can be worn as a wrist watch. A number of heart monitors provide an audio message via a set of earphones.
So that you can have an effective workout you will need to know your target heart rate. A heart rate calculator will give you this information. When you have found your target zone your heart rate monitor to keep within this zone while you workout. Keeping within the zone is important to prevent injury from working too hard or not working hard enough to gain any benefit. An exercise heart rate monitor can be an effective method to make certain you get most benefit from your exercising.
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