Maximum Heart Rate

It is the speed of heart beat measured by the number of contractions of the heart per unit of time. Maximum heart pulse means high physical load.

Two methods are suggested for HRmaximum calculation

220 – age (Kenneth Cooper)

205 – half age + 5 if she is female and + 5 if she/he is an elite athlete

210 – half of age – 10% of weight in kilograms + 4 if he is a male

217 – (0, 85 x age), minus 3 in case of elite athletes, plus 2 if the elite athletes are over 50 and plus 4 if athletes are over 55

Measurements

Several methods cannot produce reliable outcomes as they are not able to deal with the athletes’ individual characteristics. Measuring the maximum heart rate makes possible to work with data gained by measuring heart rate under maximum load.

Running

Warm up thoroughly first and drink lots of liquid before trainings. Use heart rate monitor. Try to find a gently rising straight path. Run with hard space up to a gently rising path for 2-3 minutes then jog down to the bottom of the path. This exercise should be repeated several times. Maximum heart rate is counted from the highest measured heart pulse.

Do gentle exercises to stretch the muscles to prepare the body for more work. Then swim in 2 x 200 freestyle rest for 14 seconds. Not very good swimmers use palm resistance. After the second 200 metre heart rate should be measured right after stopping.

One minute long heart rate is worth being calculated right from the measurements between 10 – 20 second.  In case of measuring resting heart rate 30 – 60 seconds can be calculated.

We should bear in our mind maximum that heart rate is different regarding running, swimming and biking. For example, the maximum heart rate of a runner can be calculated if 5 are derived from his/her maximum heart rate.