How To Measure Your Resting Heart Rate

Mike Finch | 6 October 2016

This article originally appeared on Polar.

So you’ve read about what resting heart rate is and what affects it. And now you want to know the best way to measure your resting heart rate.

You’ve come to the right place.

How to prepare

When you make the baseline measurements for your resting heart rate, don’t do any strenuous training leading up to the measurement and make sure you’re fully recovered from any activity.

It’s best to measure your resting heart rate in the morning, right after you wake up. You can do it the old-fashioned way with a timer and a finger on your pulse, but for an accurate and easy way, consider using a heart rate monitor.

Before you go to bed, make sure you have your heart rate monitor (and the soft strap) handy.

When you wake up, it’s OK to go to the bathroom before the measurement if it helps you to relax. Clear away all distractions, like music, and do not speak or be spoken to during the measurement.

You should do the measurement more than once, preferably on consecutive mornings so that you get a baseline for your resting heart rate.

5 steps to measure your resting heart rate

1. Put on the soft strap with the heart rate sensor. Lie down on your back. Relax.
2. After about one minute, start a training session on your heart rate monitor. Choose any sport profile, for example Other indoor.
3. Lie still and breathe calmly for 3-5 minutes. Don’t look at the monitor.
4. Stop the training session on your watch. Check the summary for your average heart rate and the value of your lowest heart rate (this is your resting heart rate). Mark the value of the lowest heart rate in your training diary and update it to your physical settings in Polar Flow. Having truthful and up-to-date physical settings is key to getting reliable feedback.
5. Repeat the test every one to three weeks following the original setting as closely as possible.

Analysing the results

The point of measuring your resting heart rate is to evaluate your recovery status and the development of your aerobic fitness. When you do the test under the same or very similar circumstances, it can tell you a lot about your current recovery status, possible overload state or indicate that your physical fitness has improved.

It is not uncommon that your resting heart rate is up by 2–5, sometimes even 5–7, beats per minute during hard training periods compared to a well-recovered state.

During a less intensive week, the resting heart rate should fall back to where it was during the previous less intensive week, or hopefully even slightly below that. As your level of fitness improves, your resting heart rate typically goes down about 1–2 beats for every two months.

For beginners it might be even more if they simultaneously lose weight and improve their nutrition.