Heart Rate Monitors (HRMs)
What is a Heart Rate Monitor?
A heart rate monitor consists of two parts: A transmitter strap that you wear around your chest, just underneath your bust, and a watch that you wear around your wrist. The transmitter picks up the signals of your heart, and sends them wirelessly to the watch you wear on your wrist. There are no wires involved and your heart rate is continuously displayed on your watch screen as you exercise.
Why use a Heart Rate Monitor?
- Makes it much easier to pace yourself during training and races.
- Means you can monitor your fitness levels over time, and at different times of the day.
- Measures the time taken on your runs. Many will store this info for you to refer back to later in order to check progress.
- Most monitors will calculate the number of calories you burned up in each session - great for the weight conscious among us.
- Heart Rate Monitor Training encourages you to do 'recovery runs', where you run at or below 70% of your maximum heart rate for a few sessions each week in order to recover from harder runs and not deplete glycogen stores.
Additional Features
Many monitors, as well as displaying your current heart rate as beats per minute, also come with additional features such as….
- Time of day.
- Day/Date.
- Alarm.
- Calculates average and max heart rate at the end of the session.
- Calculates total time spent exercising at the end of each session.
- Facility to set your upper and lower heart rate limits-very useful if you plan to follow the Heart Rate Monitor Training plan.
- Stopwatch.
- Countdown timer- good for interval training.
- Scan feature- the display scans through each screen for a few seconds at a time.
- Memory -stores details of training sessions so you can refer back to them later.
- % spent in target heart rate zone - ideal for following a Heart Rate Monitor Training plan.
- Calorie counter.
- Water resistant to more than 10m - means you can use it for swimming.
- Back light - useful for night time training.
- Personal zone test - a15 or so minute self test that determines your personalised target heart zones.
Types of Transmission
- Analogue transmission. This may be prone to interference from equipment such as pylons, and other runners wearing HRMs. A distinct advantage is that it will interface with most popular gym equipment.
- Coded analogue transmission. This type of HRM is coded so that signals will only be picked up from the transmitter it is sold with. This means there is no interference from equipment or other people wearing HRMs.
- Digital transmission. This type is also interference free, but it will not interface with gym equipment.
Prices
Basic heart rate monitors start from around £30. If you are wanting to get some of the advanced features you should be looking to pay £60 plus. Generally, the more expensive the HRM, the more advanced features it will have.
Read my article on Heart Rate Monitor Training to find out how to get the most from your HRM.
Where to Buy Heart Rate Monitors
She Active
Essential Fitness
Cyber Checkout
Sport Tek
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