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The Heart and Heart-Rate Monitoring
An important training companion to assist you in developing optimal endurance is a heart-rate monitor. This simple device is an important tool that not only guides your training but is part of an important assessment process, and can even be used in some competitive situations. A heart-rate monitor is really a simple biofeedback device. Dorland’s Medical Dictionary defines biofeedback as “the process of providing visual or auditory evidence to a person of the status of body function so that you may exert control over that function.” Unfortunately, most people use their heart-rate monitors only to see how high their heart rate gets during a workout, or evaluate the morning, resting heart rate.
In the 1970s, I first measured heart rates as a student involved in a biofeedback research project. I observed and jotted down responses in human subjects to various physiological inputs, such as sounds, visual effects, and other physical stimulation, including exercise. The subjects’ reactions were evaluated by measuring temperature, perspiration, and heart rate. Through this research, it became evident that using the heart rate to objectively measure body function was simple, accurate, and useful, especially for athletes. I began using the heart rate to evaluate all exercising patients, and by the early 1980s developed a formula that anyone could use with their heart monitor to help build an aerobic base. This “180 Formula” enables athletes to find the ideal maximum aerobic heart rate in which to base all aerobic training.
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Question: Why does my resting heart rate fluctuate during the day? It’s lower in the morning when I wake up, and by late afternoon, it’s about ten beats per minute faster. I like running in the late afternoon or early evening after work. Will this have any impact, or should I run in the morning?
Answer: It’s normal for the heart rate to fluctuate during the day (and even at night during sleep). Heart rate is typically lowest in the morning upon awakening, with higher levels and more fluctuations during the day, due to physical activity and increased function of various body areas including brain and intestines, which rely on high levels of blood flow. The resting rate won’t affect your aerobic pace in any significant way, so don’t change what’s most convenient and enjoyable regarding training schedules.
For centuries it’s been well known that the heart predictably increases and decreases its rate of beating with physical activity and other stimulation sensed by our brain. The Roman physician Galen first described the heart rate almost two thousand years ago. The heart rate—the number of beats per minute—is another example of our physiological uniqueness as we all have different heart rates in response to training, racing, and resting. Observing these changes, through feel (such as sensing the changes in heart rate associated with high levels of exertion), intuition (such as allowing our brain to dictate our response to changes in heart rate), and analysis (by measuring heart rate changes), and the adjustment of our training in response, is a simple form of biofeedback. In fact, humans have a built-in (so-called “hardwired”) biofeedback capability that’s been in use for millions of years and has been an important aspect of our survival as a species. Today, we continue to use the heart rate to help guide us in training, racing, and recovery. A heart-rate monitor serves as a simple form of biofeedback equipment to help in this endeavor.
The heart rate can provide us with a significant amount of important information—the reason for its extensive use by health-care professionals. The heart rate is directly related to, and a reflection of, the body’s oxygen need. The heartbeat, the outcome of the heart’s muscular contraction to help pump oxygen-rich blood through the body, is also associated with systolic blood pressure, while diastolic blood pressure reflects relaxation of the heart as measured between beats. The relationship between two heartbeats is associated with heart-rate variability, reflecting our parasympathetic aspect of brain and nervous system function—this being an important factor for professionals to assess heart health and for athletes to evaluate recovery from training and racing.
The heart itself has a built-in mechanism of nerves that controls its own rhythm (to maintain a heart rate of around 70 to 80 beats per minute), but the brain, through the action of the autonomic nervous system and various hormones, controls the wide range of heart rates based on the body’s needs. This rate can be as low as 30 to 40 in those with great aerobic function to as high as 220 in young athletes during all-out efforts.
Abnormal heart rates also fall within this range, sometimes making heart rates inaccurate. For example, in the later stages of the overtraining syndrome, the resting heart rate is abnormally low; and those who are too stressed can have abnormally high resting and training heart rates.
Like other neuromuscular tissues in the body, the heart has electrical activity, creating an electrical field throughout the body. This can be measured with an ECG (electrocardiograph), an important tool for healthcare professionals for the evaluation of the heart itself, helping to evaluate abnormal problems in the heart’s electrical activity, for example, or damage to the heart’s muscle following a heart attack.
Simpler technology allows athletes to obtain the basic information about the heart rate by sensing the beat on the chest and transmitting this information to a wristwatch for easy visual observation. Modern heart-rate monitors have become popular in recent years, with many companies making them, riding the wave of the high-tech revolution. However, without an understanding of how to effectively apply the information obtained from a heart-rate monitor, its use is more like a toy rather than the valuable assessment tool—a true biofeedback device.
