puls

Originally posted by Karen Duggan Isn't there a formula where you plug in your age, etc. and that should give you your maximum heart rate? 120-150 seems slow to me(?) When I was pregnant I was told to keep my HR at 140. Often it went to 160 and I felt fine. A formula I have seen is for maximum heart rate is, MHR = 220-age. And the recommended training level is around 80% of the maximum. I think it is a little simplistic because one's fitness level is not accounted for in that formula, and the amount of time spent at a particular rate is not accounted for. Some coaches (including some of mine) believe that short periods of intense exercise are beneficial. Terms like "red line" and "blow chow" are used to describe those training sets.

It is almost impossible for me to keep my heart rate over 120/minute. About the only time I can get it up high is if I run or ride a bike. Then go to the pool and do fly. My resting rate is 60 to 62. If I begin to swim faster, my rate will increase but then drop. I was always a distance swimer and a runner. Now I almost only swim. I do sprints to get it up at times. I have a very large heart and really big lungs. My MHR 220-46=174. I don't think I've ever had it that high!

Craig JohnsonIt is almost impossible for me to keep my heart rate over 120/minute. About the only time I can get it up high is if I run or ride a bike. Pulse rate is lower if you are lying down (the heart doesn't have to fight gravity). Being in the water cools you off, so your pulse is even lower. The references I've seen to swimming heart rate generally say to subtract about 20 bpm from your dry-land figure. Tom

This could be the chapters of some books. Anyway with the hlp of babelfish I made it through both articles. Man it took a long time. Machine translated language is hard to read. At any rate, the author states that traiing excessively at 190 bpm or over leads to cardiac dysplasia through loss of appropriate blood flow to the heart muscle. This is the first I have heard of it. In fact in the well respected book "The Lore of Running" the mian thrust of the book develops around the central tenet that lack of oxygen to theheart muscle doesn't occur in helathy people. That it is only present in unhealthy individuals and is readily recogized as angina. However, our tri club had a presentation from a Dr. Hari Tandri studying endurance athletes hearts at Johns Hopkins. The phenomenon in the article of the athlete's heart being very large but not contracting effectively - just rattling around was shown to us. In fact we saw an MRI video of it. He made no mention of the hypothesis that we can actually induce this condition through training. I think I'll email him. In any case, the author states that this condition arises from a very large heart but low stroke volume as evidenced by abnormally high heart rates during exercise. Simply checking your hear trate for ten seconds after high intensity sets will be enough to stay away from the numbers this author says will bring on heart problems. There are lots of other interesting things in these articles.

I have one of those polar heart rate monitors that was discussed earlier in this thread and I use it for swimming every day. The only thing is that you really do need to make it tight and for the men that don't have a suit over it, it may be quite difficult to keep it from flipping over off of your skin. I have no problem keeping my heart rate up near 90% while I am swimming (especially fly), but I don't get as high when I run--