About resting heart rate!?!


Question: About resting heart rate!?
I just completed a fitness assessment. For my resting heart rate, my before was 80 and my after (after 3 months of interval cardio 3 times a week) is 58.

My professor and I both thought that was too dramatic to be accurate. But, I took my pulse ten-ish times in 30 minutes to MAKE SURE I was getting 58 bpm. So that number is accurate.

I'm CURRENTLY, as I type this, getting 72 bpm.

Can rhr really fluctuate that much or am I totally out of shape? Which rhr should I trust and base my assessment off of?

Answers:

Resting Heart Rate (RHR) is only one measure of conditioning and by no means the most important. The most important measure of conditioning is how quickly you recover from your exercise bout. RHR CAN fluctuate depending on sleep levels, stress levels and how long you've actually been at rest as well as how long it has been since you exercise.

Thus, a variation of 14 beats per minute (72 - 58) is insignificant

If you took your RHR numerous times over a 30 minute period, trust those counts.

Master's degree in exercise physiology.



resting heart rate fluctuates every day, every second of your life. When you are sleeping it can be incredibly low, when you are eating or when you are digesting, it can be much higher. You should assume a certain degree of uncertainty in your heart rate.

Cardiac training can drastically improve your fitness in a relatively short period of time. Assuming you worked at high intensity cardio workout 3 times a week for 3 months, it isn't surprising that you are where you are at now. But you must consider that the before RHR of 80 also has uncertainty... for all you know, you might actually have been a 70 gone down to a 60.

To answer your question, unless if you see a real drastic change, using RHR to assess one's fitness should not be the goal or standards of fitness assessment, you should also look at your diet, lifestyle modifications and behavior changes. For all I know, you've become more fit :)




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