Keep Fit With a Heart Rate Watch

The key to staying fit is, of course, to exercise and to eat right. And the easiest way in my opinion to help you stay fit is to buy and use a heart rate watch monitor when you’re exercising. My personal trainer advises exercising two hours a week (cumulatively) in your heart rate zone. That means that you’d need to exercise more than two hours a week in order to accrue two hours in your zone because depending on how fit you are it will take time to get into your zone. You heart rate watch will keep a daily journal so you can simply add up your time over a course of the week to see if you’re on target. If your time is under as you approach the end of the week than get out there more times. If you’re over then enjoy the fact that you’re over and perhaps enjoy a low-impact walk just for fun. I’d recommend the Polar heart rate watches. You can purchase at local sporting goods stores like Dick’s Sporting Goods, Sports Authority or at www.polarusa.com. If you’re just starting out then you can expect to spend around $129.00 for a basic model like the RS100 (which is designed for runners). They can go as high as $500. The watches are fairly easy to program and use. Try keeping an exercise log on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis in a notebook or Excel spreadsheet to keep up with tallying your time. Don’t get discouraged. If you’re just starting out try to do two hours of low impact a week until you can gradually move into higher-impact workouts. Also try mixing up your exercise routine with running, swimming, biking, cardio workouts, etc. Polar designs all types of watches for all types of athletics (hence why certain models are so expensive). Most watches are water resistant which makes them great for swimming and other water-sports activities.

My CMA (Cover My “Assets”) – Consult your doctor before beginning a new exercise routine.    

Click to view a Target Heart Rate Zone Chart by Age Group.