Rate your Heart

Every piece of workout equipment I've ever been on has this to say before you begin your workout:

Please consult with your doctor before beginning a workout routine.

I'm not promoting that we kick our doctors to the curb, but I am promoting that we do a little less talking and a little more doing when it comes to our workouts.  It's all about your heart rate.  And if your heart wants to tell you something, it will.  Like, "You're KILLING ME!  Slow down already!" or "Hey, you've been running for 20 minutes and have barely broken a sweat".  Our hearts are an amazing indicator of how good or bad of a job we are doing with our workouts.

For those who are not in sync with your body to know when to do more or when to do less, here is a tool that will help put things into perspective.  It is called a heart rate calculator.  Just enter your AGE and FITNESS LEVEL and voila...instant target heart rates!  (Just a note when selecting your fitness level, most people will fall into the "average fitness" category.  If you use the heart rates for "novice" or "beginner" you will want to quickly advance yourself to the "average" or "above average" category in order to notice any substantial results.)

Now that we have our targets in mind, let's look at mine as an example.  I'm 30 and would consider myself pretty serious when it comes to my workouts.  That puts my range between 133-171 beats per minute.  There are several schools of thought when it comes to where you maintain your heart rate.  The most basic is to go all out at the high end of your range.  The second is more in line with interval training where you build your heart rate to the maximum several times in a row to create a "stair step" approach.  Either method will lead to excellent results as long as **this is important** you stay toward to middle-to-top end of your target range through your entire workout!  Anything above is clearly too much, and anything below will provide less than stellar results.  This process can be carried across to any of your favorite cardio workouts.  Just be sure to rate your heart first, then get to it.  It's all about the level of intensity that you put into your workouts, so don't be afraid to dive in head first and see what your body tells you.  It may ask you to slow down....but don't be surprised when it screams for more!