Beginner's Fitness Programs

As it was mentioned in the Fat Burning Exercise page, when you want to burn your body fat, there are two approaches. In either cases, you need to know what is your target heart rate. Here is how to estimate your target heart rate.

First, you need to know your resting heart rate. Prepare a watch with a second hand. Go to bed with it at night, and when you wake up in the morning (no alarm clock please!), while you are still laying on the bed, count your pulse rate for one minute. That will be your resting heart rate. You can count your pulse before any major activities in the morning, but the pulse count could be a few counts higher than the real resting rate, but that is OK. This is just a rough estimate, and a few counts of the error don’t affect too much.

Then put your age and the resting heart rate to the equation below:

• (Lower Limit for Your Target Heart Rate) = 0.60 x (220 – <Your Age> – <Resting Heart Rate> ) + <Resting Heart Rate>
• (Upper Limit for Your Target Heart Rate) = 0.85 x (220 – <Your Age> – <Resting Heart Rate> ) + <Resting Heart Rate>

For example, if you are 30 years old, and you found your resting heart rate is 55 counts/minute, then

220 – <Your Age> = 220 – 30 = 190
190 – <You Hart Rate> = 190 – 55 = 135

For the lower limit:
0.60 x 135 = 81
81 + 55 = 136

For the upper limit:
0.85 x 135 = 115
115 + 55 = 170

Therefore, your target heart rate for workout is between 136 and 170. For the lower intensity fat burning workout you should keep your heart rate to 136 or slightly higher, and if you are doing a high intensity workout, you should aim your heart rate to reach somewhere between 160 and 170. If you are doing an interval training, at the high intensity part, you should aim to reach your heart rate to 160 and up, but while slow part, you should aim to 136 and slightly up.

Note that these values are not absolute, and just rough estimates. Depending on individuals, the lower and upper limit may change significantly. Some people who are working out regularly, the upper limit could be much higher than this, and people who have some heart problem is much lower than this. If you are interested to know the real target heart rate, you need to go though a stress test at a proper facility such as at a hospital. I strongly recommend to do so, if you are significantly over weight, or have a potential heart problem.

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