Vitalband — Heart Rate Wristband Guide | vitalband.live
Zone figures for a 40-year-old with HRmax 180 bpm, set against the 50–90 bpm desirable and 60–100 bpm normal resting ranges.
Maximum heart rate is loosely estimated as 220 minus age in years. For a 40-year-old that gives 180 bpm, and 65% and 85% of 180 bpm are 117 bpm and 154 bpm; those two numbers bound the working zone for most sessions.
Age explains only about half of the variation in maximum heart rate. Dr. Fritz Hagerman observed maximum rates of 160 to 220 bpm in men in their 20s on Olympic rowing teams, so the 220-minus-age line is a starting estimate and a maximal test is the only way to get a personal figure.
Below the working zone sits the resting reference. A normal resting heart rate for a healthy adult is 60 to 100 bpm, while a 1993 study found 98% of cardiologists named 50 to 90 bpm as a more appropriate desirable resting range than 60 to 100 bpm.
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Sleeping heart rates around 40 to 50 bpm are common and normal, and an ultra-trained athlete may sit at 37 to 38 bpm at rest. Tachycardia is above 100 bpm at rest and bradycardia is below 60 bpm at rest, both defined while awake.
Use the zone as a target band, not a ceiling. A reading of 154 bpm at age 40 is 85% of the estimated HRmax and belongs in the session; the same reading at rest would sit above the tachycardia threshold and would be a different finding.
Population figures give the resting range a direction: in the Copenhagen City Heart Study, 65 bpm rather than 80 bpm was associated with 4.6 years longer life expectancy in men and 3.6 years in women.
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