In the world of fitness trackers, you might be wondering why I am devoting a post to manually taking a heart rate. Two reasons: first, what happens when the battery inevitably dies during a workout? Second, fitness trackers are notoriously inaccurate. And, a bonus reason, I think it is important that if you are going to use the numbers to guide your workouts (yay!), you should know what they are based on and the low tech way to get them.
Palpating, or using your fingers to manually assess, your heart rate is actually fairly simple. All you need is your body and a watch or clock with a second hand. There are two sites on your body that you can use. The first is located on the palm side of your wrist on the thumb side of your hand. This is where your radial artery extends out to your fingers. The second is under your jaw (on either side of your neck) in the soft space about halfway between your chin and your ear. This is where your carotid artery extends up into your head. Either site can be used, but some people find that they have an easier time finding their heart rate at one location, so practice with both first.
To assess your heart rate, you will use the index and middle fingers of one hand to feel one of the two points above. Using a very light press, you should be able to feel the artery expand and contract slightly. Once you are able to feel the beating, you will want to find your second hand on your clock. When the second hand passes a point that you can easily remember (12 or 6 are easiest) you will want to start counting with 0. All heart rates are given in beats per minute. For a true resting heart rate, count for either a full minute or for 30 seconds and multiply by 2.
The process itself is the same for assessing heart rate during exercise. The tricky part comes with the counting. You don’t want to stop moving, although you should slow down enough to be able to count safely. If you stop completely you run the risk of lowering your workload enough that your heart compensates by slowing its beats. Which will not give an accurate measure. So, rather than counting for a full minute as you would for a resting heart rate, count for a shorter duration of time and then use a multiplier to get to the full 60 seconds.
|
Total Time Counting Exercise HR |
Multiplier |
|
20 seconds |
3 |
|
15 seconds |
4 |
|
10 seconds |
6 |
While I love how much tech can help improve and track workouts, it is not necessary to have the latest gizmo in order to have helpful numbers. Hopefully, this has inspired your to try your hand at a low tech method.
