March 8, 2018
Measuring resting heart rate each morning can help you monitor aerobic fitness and how you’re recovering from your last hard session.
As you probably know, I’m an advocate for using a heart rate monitor to measure intensity and track your progress against pace, speed or power.
I am also a fan of monitoring resting heart rate (RHR) each morning, to see how your aerobic fitness is responding to training and how you’re recovering from your last hard session.
Whether you prefer a hi-tech or low-tech approach, it’s super simple to measure RHR, so you have no excuse for not to be doing this.
Once you understand how to interpret the numbers, you can use RHR as a tool to make decisions about when to keep pushing in training or when to ease off because you’re still recovering.
So, how do you measure it?
Racing at your potential and enjoying training is easy when you’re following the right programme.
Now that you know how to measure RHR, it’s important that you understand how to use the data to your advantage.
After you have been tracking your heart rate for a week or so, you should begin to see a relatively consistent RHR number.
Generally speaking, the lower the number, the fitter you are. The average adult will have a resting heart rate of 60-100 bpm, while athletes are likely to have a much lower bpm, somewhere in the range of 40-60.
Mild variations to your RHR are normal so if you see a variation of 3 – 5 bpm, it’s usually nothing to worry about.
Where you need to take note and use caution is when your heart rate reaches 7 or more bpm above normal.
In this situation here’s what I used to do when I was racing, and what I recommend to the athletes we work with:
Besides offering ways to monitor fitness and fatigue, a lower resting heart rate RHR is linked to some very big health benefits including a reduced risk of heart disease.
Considering this simple evaluation takes less than a minute to perform and offers such useful information, there is no reason that you shouldn’t be tracking your RHR.
As time passes, you’ll begin to see how training and life stressors affect your RHR and interpreting the information gets easier.
Ben Pulham
Ben Pulham is the founder of Coached, a personalised training programme that helps runners & triathletes optimise, track and enjoy their training.