I'm curious, how many of you use, and how often do you use it, taking your heart rate to judge your aerobic conditioning? Last winter when I was not in good swimming shape, my heart rate for a medium effort swim would run 160 beats per minute (I'm 59, not a good heart rate number). As my aerobics came into play, it would drop week by week, a good thing.
Today, I am swimming 10,000 yds every other day and on off-days do a little mile or two with a half-mile of sprints. At the end of my 10,736 yds yesterday, my heart rate was 110. Also, I took my resting heart rate yesterday morning and it was 40. The thing I notice is the better condition I am in, the faster my elevated heart rate falls and I have heard this is a good sign.
Now, I take my heart rate each and every day before, during, and after swimming. It gives me a lot of information. How about you? Are you doing this often enough?
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Former Member
I started to look into my HR because I wanted to know how hard I was working and how much rest I should be taking between reps and sets during my interval training. I didn’t remember from back in my age group and college days...
I found these articles by Genadijus Sokolovas at USA Swimming and Wayne McCauley at S. Pacific Masters respectively to be VERY informative:
www.usaswimming.org/.../ViewMiscArticle.aspxhttp://www.spma.net/heart.htm
So I did my research and went out and bought a Polar S720i HRM, my personal value recommendation based on feature-functionality and reputation – see http://polarusa.com/. It gives you a real-time reading of your HR on the watch (receiver) while swimming. It also calculates calories burned, among many other features.
More importantly, it stores your heart rate data every 5 seconds and total calories burned (among other things) on the monitor/watch and allows you to very easily download the data to your PC for review and analysis in Polar’s proprietary software, and a copy and paste away from Excel. That’s 720 HR data points in an hour practice with way cool graphs to visually show your efforts.
This information is very helpful in understanding your interval/set/workout energy zones, including being able to identify actual work vs. recovery heart rates and total calories burned in your workout. The data doesn’t lie…you’ll know when you’re dogging it.
This HRM works VERY well in the water. Every once in a very great while, the receiver/watch will lose the transmitter’s signal, but it usually restores itself, and it is easy to do manually if needed. Plus, I have had no negative impact of chlorine on the receiver or transmitter (attached to the chest strap.) And the batteries are still going strong after almost a year’s time – they are supposed to last up to two-years.
There are only two minor drawbacks. First, guys may need to wear the chest strap a little extra tight to keep it from fluttering and having the watch lose the HR transmitter’s signal. Women can just wear it under their suits.
Secondly, the chest strap is made of stretch elastic and will tend to fade and lose shape over time due to chlorine, much like a swim suit. So, I wash the chest strap after every practice. The strap (not transmitter) is also rather inexpensively replaced – about the cost of a new suit.
Hope this info helps. Between USA Swimming’s info and the HRM, I have a much greater understanding of how to go about my work effort and training.
Mark
Reply
Former Member
I started to look into my HR because I wanted to know how hard I was working and how much rest I should be taking between reps and sets during my interval training. I didn’t remember from back in my age group and college days...
I found these articles by Genadijus Sokolovas at USA Swimming and Wayne McCauley at S. Pacific Masters respectively to be VERY informative:
www.usaswimming.org/.../ViewMiscArticle.aspxhttp://www.spma.net/heart.htm
So I did my research and went out and bought a Polar S720i HRM, my personal value recommendation based on feature-functionality and reputation – see http://polarusa.com/. It gives you a real-time reading of your HR on the watch (receiver) while swimming. It also calculates calories burned, among many other features.
More importantly, it stores your heart rate data every 5 seconds and total calories burned (among other things) on the monitor/watch and allows you to very easily download the data to your PC for review and analysis in Polar’s proprietary software, and a copy and paste away from Excel. That’s 720 HR data points in an hour practice with way cool graphs to visually show your efforts.
This information is very helpful in understanding your interval/set/workout energy zones, including being able to identify actual work vs. recovery heart rates and total calories burned in your workout. The data doesn’t lie…you’ll know when you’re dogging it.
This HRM works VERY well in the water. Every once in a very great while, the receiver/watch will lose the transmitter’s signal, but it usually restores itself, and it is easy to do manually if needed. Plus, I have had no negative impact of chlorine on the receiver or transmitter (attached to the chest strap.) And the batteries are still going strong after almost a year’s time – they are supposed to last up to two-years.
There are only two minor drawbacks. First, guys may need to wear the chest strap a little extra tight to keep it from fluttering and having the watch lose the HR transmitter’s signal. Women can just wear it under their suits.
Secondly, the chest strap is made of stretch elastic and will tend to fade and lose shape over time due to chlorine, much like a swim suit. So, I wash the chest strap after every practice. The strap (not transmitter) is also rather inexpensively replaced – about the cost of a new suit.
Hope this info helps. Between USA Swimming’s info and the HRM, I have a much greater understanding of how to go about my work effort and training.
Mark
