Heart Rate Monitor Watches - Using Science To Improve Fitness

In your quest for fitness there are many tools you can use to make your life easier. The foremost among these are heart rate monitor watches.

These nifty little items can be worn as a watch, they even look like a slightly old fashioned digital watch, and can be quite unobtrusive.

The best heart rate monitors are those that have 3 main attributes.

• They do the job they're created to do
• They have the features you want
• They're simple to use

While all these may sound totally obvious, when purchasing an item like this you may be swayed by looks, or brand or price. Make sure you get something that's going to do the job for you or you have wasted your money.

It's all in the name.

They monitor your heart rate.

Why that's helpful is because your heart rate is the key to effective aerobic, anaerobic and cardiovascular exercise.

By having a professionally created plan of action to exercise within a certain heart rate range you can increase the speed at which you attain your personal goals.

For example, were it your goal to burn excess fat, your fitness instructor would measure your resting heart rate, calculate your maximum heart rate and then give you a heart range to work within.  Then, using your heart rate monitor watch, you could exercise within that range and burn fat at the maximum safe level.

Make sure you get a unit that works correctly.  

Its function can be interfered with by many things...

• Sweat - You wear a strap around your chest and if it's not 'sweatproof' then the correct heart rate may not appear,making the unit useless.
• Electrical impulses - Other items in the gym may affect your monitor so make sure it has a robust channel, enough so that exercise machines and other heart rate monitors of your fellow gym users will not impede the signal.
• Shock resistant - It's got to be good enough to stand the rigor of moving with your body.  You don't want to be worried about it not working when you're vigorously working up a sweat.

With technology the way it is, and having sometimes useless gadgets being a status symbol in our society, often the features on something like this will be more than you actually need.

Just make sure the unit you buy has all the basics, apart from the obvious heart rate counter...

• A countdown timer
• A calorie calculator
• A clock (maybe it doubles as a watch)
• A stopwatch
• Zone indicator

Apart these you might wish to buy something that

• Remembers intervals
• Can easily be programmed for your unique zone ranges
• Compares previous times

The list is inexhaustible, make sure you do your homework.

As you saw in the video example above, use heart rate monitor watches can be very simple.

It can also be an exercise in frustration.

• Are the buttons big enough?
• Can you use it easily while running or doing another form of exercise
• Is the screen large enough
• Is the user interface intuitive

This sort of thing is harder to judge and you probably want to look at some expert reviews, such as this one of the Timex Ironman Watch.

Whatever you  use to help in your road to fitness, I wish you well!