Pros and Cons of Using a Heart Rate Monitor

Heart rate monitors have become intensely popular lately. It has become a fashionable trend for many health-buffs. But aside from that, the heart rate monitor has become a helpful apparatus for people whose goal is to lose or maintain their ideal weight, and simply to keep track of their exercise and fitness habit. But how exactly will a heart rate monitor be able to aid you in your fitness goals? Are there negative consequences of using one?

Monitoring the heart rate during training is truly a great way to stay within your target heart rate zone while ensuring that you’re burning the maximum number of calories.

For runners, or those into brisk walking, the heart rate monitor is an efficient and fitting device since they come in as a wristwatch. They can easily wear it on their wrist and is a very safe way to guide the runner whether to increase or decrease his speed. The sensor will be strapped around the chest and it will automatically detect the person’s heart beat accurately. The results of the reading will be displayed on the watch which is very trouble-free to comprehend. The machine measures directly your body’s performance during your exercise so there will be no need to stop and take your pulse. This provides further motivation to continue working conscientiously on your fitness regime.

An added bonus is that heart rate monitors not only supervises a person’s heart rate, it also keeps track of the calories burned that you can monitor your improvement over time. This made the heart rate monitor a very objective tool in measuring calorie expenditure with your activities. While increasing your exercise level, it is advantageous to do so in a graded and cautious manner to avoid overexertion and extreme stress on the cardiovascular system, particularly the heart muscles.

With the guidance of your physician, your heart rate monitor is an ideal method in assessing your cardiovascular condition, helping you to settle on up to what degree you should increase your level without any risk of acquiring injury. The target heart rate every workout can be determined and your physician can recommend the activities suitable at your target heart rate.

Using a heart rate monitor during training or in a marathon could also help you control the effort that you will pour throughout the race. By displaying your heart rate, it can tell you whether you are starting off in an excessively fast pace. After training, you can review how much effort you have exerted from the beginning to the end of the race and thus improving your chances next time in maintaining an even effort.

But is the heart rate monitor really helping your workout or just making it more complex? Sometimes if people don’t use their monitors correctly, it provides inaccurate data to its users defeating the essence of the device. The computer related saying “garbage in, garbage out” applies to this instrument as well. The information received from the monitor is only as good as the information you input into the device. The calculation of data such as target heart rate, maximum heart rate, and etc. can be tricky and might lead to mistakes due to inaccuracy. Incorrect information could lead you to exercise at a heart rate above than what is healthy for you.

There may also be other factors that can affect the accuracy of the reading. Anxiety and nervousness at the beginning of a race perhaps can increase a person’s heart rate. Your heart rate may remain elevated during the training and during the match itself which will eventually lead to miscalculated results on the screen. Less expensive monitors can give distorted results gathered from interference. Let’s presume you are running with another person wearing a heart rate monitor, or exercising on a machine that has its own heart rate monitor, the monitor you’re wearing will easily pick up the signal from the other machine and alter results.

Physical factors such as discomfort brought about by the chest strap transmitter could also be a disadvantage especially for women. Using this for long durations could lead to soreness and chafing of the skin. Hence, before purchasing a heart rate monitor, you must be sure that you are very comfortable with the transmitter.
After having read the advantages and disadvantages of the heart rate monitor, you can now weigh your options on whether to obtain such instrument or not, or to choose a better type that suits your preference and activities better.