How To Lower Your Resting Heart Rate

Heart rate monitors have been an important tool for many fitness enthusiasts. The monitor serves as a guide to be able to achieve the optimum heart rate to lose weight, build muscles or improve overall health.

While checking your heart rates during exercise is helpful, knowing what your heart rate while at rest is equally significant. Resting heart rate varies from 50 to 100, with 70 beats per minute as the healthy average. A lower heart rate at rest usually means that your heart is more efficient in pumping blood to the rest of the body.

Endurance athletes, as well as most people who exercise regularly, have noticed a significant drop in their resting heart rates. It is healthy to keep resting heart rates low, as higher values can increase the risk of heart diseases. A high resting heart rate means that your heart is doing a lot of work to keep you alive.

Ways to Lower Resting Heart Rates

The good news is that the most effective ways to keep your resting heart rates at a low level are not very hard to do. They are actually the same things that you need to do to improve general health.

Do cardio exercises. They are called ‘cardio’ for a reason, and that reason is its ability to improve your heart’s health and performance. Walking, running, swimming and biking are some of the regular activities you can include in your lifestyle. You can also add aerobics to spice up your routines.

Keep a healthy balance of water. You may have heard about drinking 8 glasses of water every day. Sometimes, though, eight glasses are not enough, especially for heavy exercisers and for those who live in warmer climes.

You need not worry about ‘water weight’. Water weight is more common to those who do not drink enough. The body will sense a water shortage and will store the water available to survive.

You need a balance of fluids in the body, so drink as much as you can and urinate every time you feel the urge to pee. Holding your urine can stress your bladder and can cause an increase in heart rate.

Another obvious way to lower heart rate is to relax. Have a massage, get a full night’s sleep and take things slow. You need not stress yourself to lower heart rates.

In your efforts to improve fitness and health, it is always recommended to seek professional help when in doubt. You will find that many doctors and fitness experts are more than willing to lend you a hand.

Fitness is one of the best ways to help lower your heart rate. Any workout approved by your doctor can help you lower your resting heart rate, but don't expect to see results too fast. Workouts like the 10 minute trainer by tony horton or the insanity workout by Shaun T. are home workouts that mostly anyone can do.