Hey everyone,

I have a question. At my ymca, they have eliptical trainers with the heart rate measurers on them. At the beginning, when i measure it, it says I have a heart beat of ~90. Then, maybe 15 minutes in, when my hands are sweaty from going at it, I test it and it says i'm in the 180 to 190 area. I even hit 200 once
I am 16, but I know that is high. I think my absolute top should be like low 180.

I take 150 mg Effexor XR, 36 mg of Concerta, and 20 mg prozac. I know those definetly up blood pressure and heart rate (especially concerta and effexor). What do I do? I have had problems with low blood pressure in the past.

I guess I'll ask Dr. Mom and Dr. Dad in the morning. I just wanted to see if there were any similar experiences.

I think you should contact your doc. That heart rate is high, possibly too high, and the best one to evaluate this is your doc. It's not something you want to take chances with.

Why don't you try keeping your hands on the monitors the whole time, and slowing down your pace when it gets to 160 or so? There's no need to try and kill yourself on the machine, in fact overdoing it is going to cause you more problems then benefits.

I'm almost 40, and I push mine into the 185 range about once every 2 weeks. The rest of the time I try to stay at or below 162 for most workouts, and under 130 for the remainder.

How do we know what is the best target heart rate individually??

And how long should we stay at that pace??

I just started excersising, for now I am just blindly going for it. I have no idea if I'm doing it right.

A common method is to subtract your age from 220. That will give you your max heart rate. (In my case, 220-39 = MHR of 181). Once you have determined that, come up with some targets: I use 65% for fat-burning workouts, which comes out to 118, and 80% for cardio workouts, which is 145. I often push it to 90%, which for me is 162, and sometimes I'll go higher.

Choose a target based on the goal of your working out. You should work toward keeping your heart rate in its target zone for at least 20 minutes.

There is a lot of excellent exercise advice in the exercise forum - Trainer Dan, Fern and Nat have the answers!

Best of luck,

Another method for calculating your training zone is the Karvonen method. This method takes into account your resting heart rate as well as your age predicted maximum heart rate. Since the Karvonen method takes into account the heart rate range between resting and maximum, it is often preferred by health care providers. It is for fit and healthy individuals, who have trained for some time.
In order to use this equation, you must know your resting heart rate. Take your pulse 3 mornings in a row, BEFORE getting out of bed and doing anything. Calculate the average and use the following equation.

(220 – age) – resting heart rate = HRR (heart rate reserve)
HRR x .60 + Resting heart rate = Low end of training zone
HRR x .80 + resting heart rate = high end of training zone

Using myself as an example, you can see the difference in using the straight line method and the Karvonen method.
220 – 40 = 180 X .65 = 117 (Fat burning target heart rate)
220 – 40 = 180 – 55 (rhr) X .65 + 55 = 136

I hope this helps.

Thanks for posting that - I'll use that method instead of the other one.