My exercise and fat burning equipment #2

My second most important piece of equipment for exercising and fat burning is a good quality heart rate monitor. If you want to increase the effectiveness of your exercise, get more out of each workout, and spend less time with better results, then you owe it to yourself to check out today’s heart rate monitors.

Heart rate monitors that come with chest straps are without doubt the most accurate of the heart monitors available. The chest strap is worn around your chest (naturally), just a few centimeters below your breast. It contains an electronic sensor that is able to detect electrical activity of your heart and transmit it to the receiver, or brain of the machine – just like an ECG. The chest transmitter continually senses your heartbeat and constantly transmits that information to a display monitor, which is generally attached to your wrist like a watch.

The watch can be worn as a regular sports watch, and when not connected to the transmitter strap, will still give you time of day, alarms, stopwatch functions, etc.

If you are planning to buy a quality heart rate monitor, one of the more popular manufacturers around is Polar. Polar technology has been around for two decades now and the company has achieved the status of being the industry leader in the heart rate monitors field. They have different series for heart rate monitors, ranging from beginners and intermediates to professional athletes. You can also choose your heart rate monitor from different categories, depending on what your needs are: Cardiac Rehab, Jogging, Cycling, Swimming (this includes a waterproof monitor-watch), Fitness, Weight Management and so forth.

You can of course purchase one of the lower-end models but low quality heart monitors can lead to inaccurate results and that sort of defeats the purpose of buying one – and what price do place on your health.

increase the effectiveness of your exercise and get more out of each workoutBy monitoring your heart rate you can reduce the chance of injury from over training and know you are getting a great workout by staying in the “target zone“, drastically increasing the efficiency and benefits of your workouts.

One of the first things you need to know when using a heart rate monitor is what your maximum heart rate is. The standard formula used is to subtract your age from 220, however, we also provide a more accurate method, the Karvonen formula . You can then calculate at what percentage of maximum you should be exercising at.

When doing cardiovascular training, research says exercising at 60-70% of your maximum heart rate will be best for fat loss and to build endurance, while exercising in the 70-80% of maximum range will increase your fitness.

As I tend to focus primarily on cycling for my cardio/fat burning workouts I purchased a Polar S710 cycling heart rate monitor. I also purchased the speed/distance and cadence sensors that go with this unit and the infra-red serial connector for uploading my exercise information to a computer.

Although it seemed like an expensive purchase at the time, it does provide me with an incredible amount of information (see images below) allowing me to specifically tailor my exercise programs to maximise my fat burning. I have been using this Polar heart rate monitor for the past 8 years, so if I amortize the initial cost over that time frame, then it is quite affordable – working out at less than $100.00 per year.

It certainly pays to shop around for a good deal, especially on the internet. If my memory serves me correctly I purchased my Polar heart rate monitor and cycling sensors through the internet from Scotland of all places.