There's nothing more important to a person’s fitness and overall health than the performance of their heart. The heart is everything to a body. It pushes the blood throughout, allowing oxygen to get to every organ and ensure that they have the power to do what they need to do. The heart is the centerpiece both literally and figuratively.
Knowing exactly what the heart is doing is of interest to a lot of people. Whether it’s for medical reasons or for fitness reasons, knowing your own heart rate can be very beneficial. There are many devices that measure it and lots of accessories that link into the information. This allows people to get all the information that they could hope for. Doctors and active people are taking this information and making their lives and their health better!
Heart Rate Monitors
People who are looking to keep track of their heart do so through heart rate monitors. There are different varieties of these depending on what the goal of the person is. Even with something as simple as keeping track of a heart rate, there are always multiple goals.
The first heart rate monitors were installed in order to provide medical information. Heart rates were tracked while in hospitals so that sudden changes could be noticed. This morphed into mobile trackers. These trackers would take data and note any serious spikes up or down. Doctors would analyze these results with the patient and determine what they were doing during those times. That could give them an idea of what was causing elevated heart rates and spikes. Further development allowed people with permanent heart conditions to receive an auditory warning anytime they were receiving a heartbeat spike. From that warning they can find a way to calm down.
Heart rate monitors went from being utilitarian to optional as people recognized the benefit of knowing your heartbeat during workouts. Workouts have very much been designed around the concept of elevating a heart rate, then using less effort to merely maintain before elevating it again. It’s a methodology that requires thorough heart rate tracking but has proven results.
Fitness Trackers
The next step of heart rate monitors is to combine that with fitness trackers. These trackers manage to check out your heart rate during the entire time they are worn. Ideally they are intended to be worn during fitness activities like running or sports. Once again, the data acquired can be compared to the time during the activity. This gives each person wearing one the peak of their exercise.
Fitness trackers also look at things like steps completed and distance moved. They’re small and convenient accessories.
What is the Best Heart Rate Monitor or Heart Rate Monitor Watch?
There are a lot of different great heart rate monitors. The form they take and the amount of extra things they do can alter how expensive they are. Here are some of the best heart rate monitors or heart rate monitor watches:
- Polar H7 Heart Rate Sensor
- Garmin HRM-Run
- Samsung Gear IconX
- Wahoo Fitness Tickr X Heart Rate Monitor
- MIO Link
- Pear Mobile Training Intelligence System
There are many other products that can monitor heart rates and some other items which are classified as fitness trackers or as step counters that also can perform the heart rate monitoring.