How To Choose A Heart Rate Monitor
If you're serious about endurance exercise, you already own one. If you're serious enough to need one, consider this stuff before you buy.
Before we examine how to choose a heart rate monitor, let's briefly discuss why. Most people live joyous, fulfilled lives without ever owning one. You've no reason to run out and buy a monitor for a hundred bucks when you can just run out and, well, run. For free, okay? If you're just in the workout for the pleasure, you don't really need one. If you're not going to fully incorporate your monitor into a training regimen, don't buy one. If you're not going to learn how to best use your monitor, don't buy one. That's the first step in choosing a heart monitor: be sure you really need one before you buy.
You need a heart rate monitor if you're the driven type of chronic endorphin addict who goes 110% everytime you exercise, leaving little more than a mound of overtrained smoking hamburger to recover for the next grueling workout. If your tendency is to redline your heart with every workout, you're probably a Triathlete-cyborg who should own two or three heart rate monitors.
Conversely, you need a heart rate monitor if you're an undertrainer; if you think you're working hard enough, but aren't getting the dramatic results you anticipate. If your tendency is to socialize on the treadmills at the gym, a heart rate monitor can tell you if you're loafing.
You need a monitor if you're considering serious involvement in any endurance sport of long duration; swimming, running, biking, walking, hiking, indoor aerobics; or to measure the aerobic benefits of workouts of a more burst/rest nature - basketball, soccer, sandlot football, plyometrics, or martial arts.
Why Even Own a Heart Rate Monitor?
A heart rate monitor is essential gear for any endurance athlete wishing to reach his full potential. All quantifiable aerobic workouts can be measured as a percentage of maximum heart rate; a heart rate monitor allows the athlete to both determine maximum heart rate and the deduced percentage of that max rate without a visit to the clinic for a treadmill test. Face it; all those charts showing 220 minus your age equalling this arbitrary 70% heart rate zone are simply too generalized to do you any good, and they don't account for any increase in conditioning. Once you know your personal maximum heart rate, you can tailor heart rate zones precisely for maximum benefit. Owning a monitor makes checking change in maximum heart rate something any athlete can do on a monthly basis (or more frequently. Ugh).
Using a heart rate monitor eliminates guesswork from training intensity. The monitor is there to make sure that you work as hard as your periodized schedule calls for - no easier, no harder - which helps the dedicated avoid burnout, the slacker to avoid undertraining, and everyone to avoid injury. If you wake up one morning and are fighting a cold or are just plain overtrained, your resting heart rate will be elevated, and when you begin your workout the monitor will compensate by showing a higher exercising heart rate - a signal for you to take it easier. If, on the other hand, you wake up to find that the stars have aligned and you're radioactive with excess energy, you should be able to exercise much faster at the same predetermined heart rate. In either case, the heart rate monitor standardizes the workout so you work at a 70% (or whatever) effort regardless of how you feel.
Stuff to Look For When Buying a Monitor
Reliability. A good monitor will allow you to exercise now; evaluate later. Cheap units have a hard time finding a heart beat when you're at rest, or wig out by registering impossible palpitations when you're really sweaty and the ol' ticker's pumping really hard. Try on the unit before buying it. If it doesn't give you a heart rate reading right away, and you're certain that your heart is beating, don't buy it. Some monitor literature recommends that you wet the contacts before putting on the chest unit to get a reading - consider statements like these the manufacturers' way of telling you that a unit is a substandard one.
Interference. Sometimes the best units will get a false reading if their signal is jammed. This will usually happen in a crowd of people wearing other monitors (a problem in the crush at a race's starting line, or jogging next to a partner, for instance) or near electrical exercise equipment (a problem if you own a treadmill, stationary bike or stairmaster). One brand of recumbent stationary cycle sends bad signals to my monitor, giving me heart rate readings in the low 250's, unless I strap the wrist unit to the back of my hat when riding, which is just far enough from the circuitry of the bike and just close enough to my chest strap to make me look like a complete dweeb. To avoid similar embarrassment, determine whether or not a monitor will play nice with your favorite machines before buying.
Buy a Contact Monitor. Until someone comes up with something better, the chest-strap skin-contact heart rate monitors are the most reliable. These type go around your chest just at sternum level like some sort of abbreviated underwire bra. Units that clip to a finger or earlobe have trouble finding or keeping a beat; units that require one to touch a thumb to a pad are just a waste of money - if you're going that route, why not just plant your thumb on your jugular and count to ten?
Comfort. Be sure the chest strap will stay snugly in place when sweaty-wet. Do you have to cinch it like a saddle to keep it from slipping down around your ankles? Does the elastic expand for easy breathing (take a few deep breaths)? Does it poke you anywhere (look for stitching or seams on the inside/skinside)? Are your upper arms going to chafe against it (do a running movement, and multiply by a few thousand)? Does it just feel funky? If it doesn't feel good now, it sure ain't gonna feel comfy at mile 20 of that marathon.
Buy waterproof. Your monitor should be more than simply water resistant, it should function happily even if you're swimming. If you're not a swimmer or triathlete and have absolutely no plans to swim for exercise, your chest strap and wrist unit will probably come in contact with enough sweat to drown a cheap unit. Think of a waterproof designation as an earmark of a well-constructed unit.
Large, Easy to See Readout. An on-demand backlight is a plus.
Protected buttons. Look for recessed buttons, or hoods around the function-buttons on the wrist unit. These will keep Murphy from pushing the stop button in the middle of what-otherwise-would-have-been-your-most-memorable-workout-ever. There's nothing like the churning feet at the swim start of a triathlon to switch off monitors with big, unprotected buttons.
Features. Exercise now, evaluate later. All heart rate monitors will tell you the status of your heart rate. Don't buy a monitor if this is all it offers - are you really planning to bike, run, or swim with your eyes glued to your wrist watch? Look for a unit that computes average heart rate, maximum heart rate, time in/above/below your predetermined training zone, and has normal watch functions like time of day, stopwatch, alarm, countdown timer, and lap times. I train with a normal fully-featured Timex Ironman on one wrist and my monitor on the other. And I still use all the functions on the monitor unit (besides looking like a total dweeb, again).
The average heart rate function is the most essential of all, since it gauges how hard your heart chugged over the entirety of your workout. So much so that this number can become a numerical rating for the intensity of a workout; a five mile run at a 155 beats per minute average can feel ten times harder than a 10 mile run at 145. I recommend that you don't waste your time on any models that neglect an average rate feature.
Some higher-end units will allow you to download your workout data to a PC. Since the software is Windoze only, and I own Macintosh computers, I've not used this function. Call it sour grapes, or call me an Aerobic Amish, but I prefer the satisfaction in logging my workout stats onto the calendar by hand.
Finally, remember that you're going to use your monitor when you're in oxygen debt, most of your blood is flowing away from your brain to your musculature, and with sweat stinging at your eyes. So, take a peek at the instruction booklet before buying. Does it look simple? Programming your monitor should be intuitive. If you can't get the information you need from the unit with a few button-pushes, it will probably aggravate you during those mentally-incapacitating workouts you're planning.
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