7 Steps to Using a Heart Rate Monitor

Heart Zones Training with your mind-body link – the heart rate monitor – may seem confusing at first. You’ll be learning and discovering new ways of looking at the effort you put out, new ways of understanding fitness that you were never taught in your physical education classes at school. A lot has happened in the world of fitness in just the last ten years, and with your heart rate monitor and heart zones training, you are ready to reap the benefits.

STEP 3. USE THE FIVE TRAINING ZONES

Before reading this book, you may have already heard about some-thing called a target heart zone. Well, I’m here to tell you that the single, set, target heart zone doesn’t exist. There is no one zone, no one range of heart rates, that is best for everyone. Each of our bodies are different and each of our fitness/training goals are different, so there are multiple, different, zones. And in each of these different zones you get different benefits; or, as some say, multiple zones beget multiple benefits.

Each of the zones is named for the benefits that you get from exercising within them.

The heart zones chart shows us a few important things. One, as mentioned above, there are multiple zones. Two, each of the heart zones is determined by a percentage of your maximum heart rate. Three, by working out in different zones you receive different benefits.