Benefits of Heart Rate Monitoring

Heart Rate is one of the key factors that will enable you to move your workout to the next level by introducing small changes to the way you train and monitor your body. Very similar workout routines (like duration or the distance swam) can bring better results if you just plan it with your heart rate in mind. In this post we’ll show you how to use heart rate monitoring to make your training sessions more efficient.

Benefits of heart rate monitoring

Knowledge is a powerful thing when it comes to workout – it can give you many benefits just by knowing what is your heart rate at any given moment while in the swimming pool!

How intense was your workout?
Measuring your heart rate is a perfect and objective way to check the intensity of your workout and to compare your effort between multiple sessions. It’s telling you much more about your training than duration or distance swam alone.

Personal coach
Combining heart rate monitoring with the level of perceived effort you make can be just like a personal coach telling you if you need to intensify your workout or slow down to find your 'sweet spot’ and be as effective as possible!

Be safe during the workout
Measuring the intensity of your training is also a great way to be sure you won’t overtrain ever again. After finding the right heart rate for you (you will find ways to do that below!) you can control the maximum intensity that is right for your body and age group! Remember that as safe as swimming is, overtraining might lead to lowering your motivation and sometimes even to injuries! With heart rate monitor you’ll be safer during your workouts.

Better measurement of calories burned
Most of devices and systems calculating calories burned take only workout duration and distance into account. With heart rate monitoring you can add intensity as a factor to get much more accurate results and know exactly how much calories you’ve burned!

Heart Rate Zones
Different intensity of the workout (pulse values) has different effect on your body. Depending on your goals (strength, fat burning etc.) you should swim maintaining the pulse that guarantees faster progress. We divide workout intensity into several heart rate zones, that reflect percentage of your maximum heart rate level:

50-60% – You burn fat at a moderate speed. This zone is perfect for people with health problems, obese or starting their swimming adventure. This zone is perfect for improving your general health and preparing you for the next step in your workout plan.

60-70% – This one is called the fat burn zone as it uses mainly fat to generate energy. This one is obviously for all of us how want to lose weight and feel better. It also significantly improves heart health by lowering body fat levels.

70-80% – This is what is called cardio-swimming and it is perfect for experienced athletes as it improves body strength, endurance and cardiovascular fitness. In this zone you burn 50% carbs and 50% fat.

80-90% – For improving speed and endurance. This zone lets you burn mainly sugars. It has a great effect on your body build and strength.

90-100% – Only for professionals and performed in short bursts; training in this zone helps experienced swimmers to push their endurance and strength to the limit.

How to calculate your optimal heart rate?

How to monitor your heart rate?

So what does swimmers do today to measure pulse reliably?

• They mostly use chest straps. What it is an elastic band you put over your chest so it can measure your heart rate and send that data to another device such as sport tracker or smartphone. It is praised for its accuracy but many athletes find it uncomfortable (especially male swimmers) because it easily slips off the right position making it hard to get constant measurement.
• Sport band or training watch is very comfortable as it reads your heart rate from the wrist. Sport bands are very simple to use but there’s no way to monitor your pulse real time and correct the intensity of your workout while you’re in the pool. Most of watches on the market are rather bulky and uncomfortable because of their weight. With Swimmo we found the sweet spot and it is comfortable and precise to monitor your heart rate – you can read more about it below.

• For those who don’t use technology solutions there’s always manual measurement of the heart rate. To do this, between your sets you need to place two fingers between the bone and the tendon over your radial artery — which is located on the thumb side of your wrist or on the carotid artery on either side of your neck toward your windpipe. When you feel your pulse, count the number of beats in 15 seconds. Multiply this number by 4 to calculate your beats a minute.

Swimmo has the solution!
Most of the smart devices will only display your current pulse values but won’t be your expert on cardio workouts. We knew we could do it better! We have found a way to make heart rate monitoring precise and comfortable but also allows you to see the results in real time while in the pool!  Thanks to free iOS and Android app you can input a series of information about yourself and let us choose the perfect values for different zones. All you have to do is choose your goal like ‘Fat Burn’ and we will take care of the rest letting you focus on what is important and fun – swimming! So get slim, healthy and strong with our Intensity Coach and heart rate monitor!

Kamil Market Development Expert at Swimmo

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