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Heart rate data can tell you a lot about your training and your health. If you’ve trained according to your heart rate zones, you’re probably familiar with how your cardiovascular system responds to physical activity. But paying attention to your resting heart rate can provide even more important insights into your fitness and well-being.

As the term suggests, resting heart rate (RHR) refers to the number of times your heart beats per minute when the body is at rest. You can get a fairly accurate measurement of this metric using a wearable fitness tracker (chest straps, while less comfortable, tend to deliver more precise results than wrist-worn heart rate trackers) or by using your fingers to count your radial pulse.

“You want to take [a resting heart rate reading] first thing in the morning after a restful night’s sleep, lying on your back, free of any distractions,” What Are Normal Cholesterol Levels., faculty within the School of Exercise and Nutritional Sciences at San Diego State University, tells Runner’s World. If you use a watch, he suggests wearing it on the inside of your wrist so that it can better mold to the skin and soft tissue. Just be careful not to move your arm (or any other part of your body) while taking a reading.

According to the RHR is considered an indicator of overall, the range for average resting heart rate is between 60 and 100 beats per minute (bpm). But this can vary widely by individual and several factors can influence your number, including biological sex, stress, medications, medical issues, hormones, age, and level of regular physical activity. Generally speaking, a lower resting heart rate is better.

“heart rate zones cardiovascular fitness or how efficiently you are able to meet your body’s oxygen demands,” says Pamela Geisel, M.S., C.S.C.S., exercise physiologist and the director of performance and wellness services at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City. “A lower RHR has been correlated with a lower risk of cardiovascular disease and other illnesses.”

A higher resting heart rate can be a sign of a myriad of health problems. For example, a 2017 meta-analysis of 87 relevant studies found an association between higher resting heart rate and increased risk of coronary heart disease, sudden cardiac death, heart failure, atrial fibrillation, stroke, cardiovascular disease, total cancer, and all-cause mortality.

The reason why runners and other athletes typically have adjusting your workouts than their sedentary peers is a matter of adaptation. As you increase your physical activity, “the body says, ‘how can I deliver oxygen to my blood cells more efficiently?’” Comana explains.

The answer: more red blood cells and, therefore, an increased blood volume. To accommodate that higher blood volume, the heart becomes stronger and able to pump out more blood with every contraction. “If you’re able to eject more blood out of the heart with every beat, your heart doesn’t have to beat as many times. So, that’s the reason why your resting heart rate comes down,” Comana says.

Lessen your training or lowering your stress levels, and your resting heart rate will eventually creep back up. “You no longer have that demand for as many red blood cells,” Comana explains. So, as red blood cells die (they have a lifespan of about four months), the body manufactures fewer new ones, blood volume decreases, and the heart and its stroke volume (the amount of blood it pumps out with each contraction) shrink. “It’s like a muscle: If you don’t use it, you lose it,” Comana says.

In addition to the effects on red blood cells, endurance exercise leads to other mechanisms that help the heart become stronger and more efficient, therefore lowering resting heart rate, says Tamanna Singh, M.D., sports cardiologist and codirector of the Sports Cardiology Center at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. These positive effects include:

• Increased mitochondria density: As you increase your endurance training, your body requires more energy. And as the energy demand of the cells increase, so does mitochondrial density—mitochondria are the little powerhouses of our cells that help to generate energy so you can keep running, Singh explains. This makes the heart a stronger pump and a more efficient one, and if our heart is stronger and more efficient with each contraction then we don’t need as high of a heart rate to maintain our cardiac output, she says.
• Larger heart: Endurance training may also lead to overall enlargement of the heart, albeit after years of regular exercise. “So the greater the chamber size, the more blood it can hold. And the stronger the muscle, the more forceful contraction,” Singh explains, calling out that increase in stroke volume and how that, specifically, can lead to lower resting heart rate. This also means the heart doesn’t have to work as hard to maintain our cardio efforts.
• and go do something else. Lets go: Healthy blood vessels that carry blood away from the heart dilate (or expand) with exercise to increase oxygen delivery to muscles, Singh explains. “If you deliver more oxygen-rich blood to the muscles with arterial vasodilation, then the heart does not need to contract as often,” meaning the heart also doesn’t have to work as hard, leading to that lower heart rate, she adds.
• Improved nervous system function: Consistent training over time also increases the parasympathetic or “rest and digest” activity after exercise, leading to rapid heart rate recovery. It also contributes to overall parasympathetic activity at rest, which leads to lower resting heart rate and improve Shoes & Gear, Singh says.

The bottom line: Endurance exercise affects multiple systems in the body which lead to a lower resting heart rate. This includes changes at the cellular, cardiac, and blood vessel level, Singh says. In the end, it allows your heart to work better.

So, what if you’re sticking to your regular training schedule and notice that your resting heart rate is elevated? A single, higher-than-normal reading generally is not cause for concern; dehydration, stimulants, or even a bad night’s sleep could cause a temporary spike. But if you see your resting heart rate climbing by eight to 10 beats over the course of seven to 10 days, Comana recommends examining both your workouts A Part of Hearst Digital Media overtraining and not allowing your body adequate rest and recovery between workouts.

On the other hand, your high resting heart rate may have nothing to do with exercise. “A lot of the time, what we consider to be overtraining may not be your program,” he says. “It may be the life stresses that are just dog piles on top of you, because stress is just an accumulation of any disruption of homeostasis.”

To your body, stress is stress; it doesn’t matter if it’s coming from a looming work deadline or back-to-back HIIT workouts. Problems at work, in your relationship, and relating to your finances obviously can’t be avoided—you need to tend to those issues, which is inherently stressful. “But what you can do is control your workouts,” Comana says. “You might need to off-load, de-load, or redirect.”

Off-loading, or stopping exercise altogether, is the most drastic intervention, but it can be incredibly effective. Ever notice how that first run after a few days off can feel like one of your best ever? “You might have been pushing the envelope where you were bordering on overtraining, and we just gave you some time off to allow your body a little bit more time to recuperate, to restore homeostasis. And then you came back feeling refreshed,” Comana says. “Stress is not ordinarily bad, but we need time to recover from it.”

Increased mitochondria density Improved nervous system function. Comana recommends cutting down to 50 percent to 70 percent of what you usually do for your workouts. That means if you run six days a week, you may want to incorporate a couple of extra rest days Health & Injuries.

Comana’s third strategy, redirecting, is simply switching up your routine with a new activity, preferably something that feels fun or playful. “Let’s take a break from pounding the treadmill and go do something else. Let’s go hike a hill. Let’s go swim in the pool,” Comana says. “Go play so it seems like it’s something fun rather than it’s something that you have to do—something that’s part of your training. That’s the idea behind it.”

If, after heart rate variability and lowering your stress levels, you’re still experiencing a high resting heart rate, it’s a good idea to check in with your medical provider. “An elevated heart rate response could be indicative of something bigger, something more problematic,” Comana says.

If you implement strategies to lower your resting heart rate and it’s not coming down, that could be a red flag that should be more thoroughly investigated, he adds. While a high resting heart rate could be tied to several conditions, it would be just one factor at play, so your doctor will do a full exam before making a diagnosis.

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Sports Cardiologist & Medical Advisor

Tamanna K. Singh, M.D., is a board-certified adult clinical and sports cardiologist and RRCA-certified run coach. She earned her medical degree from Boston University School of Medicine and completed her Internal Medicine Residency at Boston Medical Center. She completed her Cardiovascular Medicine fellowship at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York and her specialty training in Sports Cardiology at Massachusetts General Hospital. She is currently the codirector of the Sports Cardiology Center at Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio and assistant professor of medicine at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University. To date, she has held several council roles with the American College of Cardiology (ACC). As a sports cardiologist, Dr. Singh provides cardiovascular care for professional, competitive, and recreational athletes and describes herself as an advocate for safe participation in sports. Media and print contributions include the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, and others. Outside of her profession, she enjoys running marathons, hitting the weights in the gym, playing sous-chef to her wonderful husband while cooking plant-based meals, and playing with her four beautiful dogs.