Heart rate recovery

Heart rate recovery is an important factor in determining how fit you are becoming. Generally, you want you're heart rate to recover within two minutes. As you breath oxygen into you're lungs with deep breaths, you want to exhale slowly and concentrate on relaxing or calming you're heart rate to slow it down. The faster you breath, obviously the more you're body is struggling to get oxygen. The more efficient you're heart and lungs become through exercise, the faster you will recover.

I found this chart on the Real Age web site. It's a good chart depicting recovery rates and how it reflects you're age: When you start you're cool down, take note of you're ending heart rate and time it for two minutes.

Real Age web site

Subtract your 2-minute heart rate from the heart rate you took immediately after exercising. The faster your heart rate recovers -- or slows down -- the fitter and healthier your heart.

If the difference between the two numbers is:

Less than 22: Your RealAge is slightly older than your calendar age.

22–52: Your RealAge is about the same as your calendar age.

53–58: Your RealAge is slightly younger than your calendar age.

59–65: Your RealAge is moderately younger than your calendar age.

66 or more: Your RealAge is a lot younger than your calendar age.
Author: Real Age Web site


For me, I like to see my heart rate recover at least to 100 or below, before I walk away from my cool down and start getting on with life.

When I had my stress test, the cardiologist said that the average woman will reach her minimum heart rate in the first 3 minutes of exercise. After 20 minutes on the tread mill, at a brisk walk, at an incline of 15; I still had not reached my minimum heart rate at age 40. He had me run for ten more minutes to get my heart rate up to my minimum. In his opinion, looking at my performance and Ekg, the heart doesn't get any better than this. That is what every runner should look for. Lesson learned; be an above average woman and take care of you're heart!