I'm having a really hard time finding a target heart rate calculator that seems accurate. That is, all the calculators are giving me different info, from 79 to 168 beats per minute. How can my target heart rate be 79, that's what it is when I'm sleeping....?

Here's my info
I'm 22
female
222 pounds
very little fitness ability, but I'm working on it
my resting heart rate is something like 80 BMP
I'm aiming for cardio fitness, not training for an event or anything.


Thanks for your help!

Dont worry about target heart rate for now.

Work towards exercising regularly at an exertion that you can talk while exercising and that you can maintain for 30-45 minutes. Realize that you will gain fitness rather quickly so to STAY at this level you will have to keep going faster.

Then once exercise is a part of your routine a couple days a week start playing with what it feels like to go a little harder.

Eventually, you want most days to find the "I CAN talk but I would PREFER not to" zone for at least 30 minutes.

After that occasionally you want to exceed that into the "Dont talk to me zone" for repeated brief periods (intervals -say 4-8 reps of 1-2 minutes ) maybe once or twice a week.

The truth is unless you actually MEASURE your true MAX HR all of those "formulas" are just guessing anyway. I know a 38 year old woman who's max HR is 225. No joke. Mine is 189 measured. Theoretically both of us should have a max HR of 182

If using a HR rate monitor, you will find lots of different calculators depending on what type of exercise intensity you are aiming for. High intensity could be like running and moderate could be jogging depending on your activity level.

at your high intensity workout, your target heart rate should be 85% of your "heart rate maximum" +/- 5. The common medical calculation for this can be estimated by maximum= 220-age. Ex. I am 25 so my max HR should be 195 and my hard workouts should keep me in the zone of 160-170.

Moderate intensity is usually ~75%, so in my example above that would be 140-150.

Hope this helps. BTW do not rely on the HR monitors on the cardio machines for this info as they are very inaccurate

What a coincidence I am just reading about this in my personal training book...You can also rate your exercise intensity by using a numeric system, this scale is called the "Modified Borg Scale", I also find it not as confusing as all those calculations... Here's the scale:

0 Nothing at all

0.5 Very, very weak

1 Very weak

2 Weak

3 Moderate

4 Somewhat strong

5 Strong

6

7 Very strong

8

9

10 Very, very strong

Hope this helps, ask more questions if need be...

I personally rely on the perceived exertion scale that I found on About.com. It's pretty much the same thing as the Modified Borg Scale that Ilene mentions, but I find the descriptions to be a little easier for me to relate to. "Hard" can mean different things to different people, but "I can still talk, but am slightly breathless" pretty much means the same thing to everyone.

thanks for your answers, everyone.

That is a MUCH clearer scale Blue

i actually have been wondering about this too. i just bought the polar hr monitor and have been using it for the last week or so. i notice that i spend very little time during my workout in my target hr zone, and that's usually when i'm finished with the workout part and am cooling down.
i'm 28 years old. my hr is generally about 170-180 for the majority of my workout? is that a problem? is it dangerous? is it burning muscle not fat? what's the deal?