Question

What is the best way to take your pulse? What important things about physical fitness can your resting, target and recovery heart rates tell you?

Answer 1

There are several ways to take your pulse:
- Good old fashioned way (see below)
- Using fitness tracking devices
Taking your pulse using a watch and finger:
- Place two fingers (not a thumb) on your right arm
- Place those two fingers on the thumb side of the arm (around the radial artery)
- Count the number of every beat you hear for 15 seconds (don’t skip one, each beat counts)
- Multiply the number by 4 to get the result
What those cool things mean:
Your heart rate during exercise can be somewhat of a direct variation to the input you exert. For example, the red zone is the highest attainable BPM during exercise
- Resting heart rate lets physicians know the health of your cardiovascular system (lower the resting, the better)
- Recovering heart rate is the period in which your heart returns to resting after exercise.