Heart rate during sports

The heart rate, also colloquially called pulse, plays an important role in sports. It indicates how often the heart beats in one minute. During training or when doing sports in general, you should take care not to overload your body and this is exactly where the heart rate can help you. Besides controlling your heart rate, however, your own body feeling and sensation is at least as important.

General

The heart rate at rest is about 70 beats per minute for a less trained person. It can vary greatly depending on age, physical fitness or anatomy. The more trained a person is, the lower the resting heart rate (the heart rate) because the heart and circulation work more economically and therefore fewer beats are needed to supply the body with sufficient blood.

For top athletes, the resting heart rate can be lowered to about 40 beats. The heart rate is therefore also an indicator of how fit and trained a person is. An increased heart rate does not always mean that a person is not fit, but can also indicate heart muscle infections or arteriosclerosis.

An indicator of this is that the heart rate increases significantly at rest. Starting from the resting heart rate, the heart rate increases with increasing physical exertion. After getting up in the morning, people go to the kitchen for breakfast and then brush their teeth.

The heart rate already increases a little bit, because the body is moving and needs more energy. When you do sports, you strain yourself even more and your pulse rate increases to such an extent that all important functions can be maintained and muscles and organs are supplied with sufficient blood and nutrients. For example, a ten-kilometer jogging session increases the pulse rate to about 140 to 150 beats per minute.

The faster an athlete jogs, the higher the heart rate increases and the more strenuous the strain on our bodies. At some point, the body reaches its upper limit in terms of heart rate and maximum possible load. This upper limit is the maximum heart rate and should only be used by trained athletes. And then also only at single intensive training loads or in a competition. If the maximum pulse load is continuous or often repeated, health problems can follow.