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Friday, May 10, 2013

By Natalie van Dasshal


A heart rate monitor senses and displays your heart rate. Walkers can use heart rate to adjust the intensity of their walk -- speeding up or slowing down to stay in their chosen heart rate zone. Two walkers going the same speed may be in different zones -- one barely working at all, the other near maximum and straining. As your fitness improves, you can walk faster at the same heart rate.

It all depends on what you will use it for. Do you just want to get active? Improve fitness? Maximize performance?Polar is probably the best recognized brand and for a good reason, they sell quality product. They make it easy on their website to determine which HRM is right for you with their product finder area which asks you questions about how you will use it. They offer everything from the most basic watch to the most technical watch.

A "best" heart rate monitors provide nearly an internet worth of information. They often come with PC-compatible software to coach you through analyzing your workouts and building a program to reach specific fitness goals. They also often come with GPS tracking sensors or accelerometer foot pods to monitor speed, distance, and elevation. While the average outdoor enthusiast may be overwhelmed by the functionality of the best heart rate monitors, these are the tools Olympic athletes and world-class skiers use.

Basic models display only your heart rate, and perhaps elapsed exercise time. With increasing price you get a variety of useful features such as: Heart rate zone alarm: Set the zone and it alerts you when you are high or low. Timers: Countdown timer, stopwatch, interval timers, clock, alarm. Calories burned. Time in zone, splits. Fitness test. Computer link. Pre-programmed workouts.

If you want to know just steps, distance, and approximate calories burned during the nightly dog walk, a pedometer with its internal pendulum will suit you fine. But if you are looking for more detailed and accurate information about your current level of fitness so you can make progress toward improved fitness, a heart rate monitor is the best tool.

Even though a heart rate monitor can be an excellent way to judge the intensity of your workout, it's still important to pay attention to your body and not rely solely on the monitor for feedback. Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE) and the "Talk Test" are two other ways to know how hard you're working.




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