 Alright guys, today we're going to talk about heart rate and particularly how to take your heart rate and Why it can be very beneficial for you as an athlete to monitor your heart rate on a daily basis In here, there's a heart obviously the heart is a muscle that beats all the blood around the body And so the blood obviously delivers nutrients fuel oxygen To all the tissues and cells around the body as well as remove waste products and there's also a few other functions now as you get fitter One of the adaptions that happen there are many adaptions that take place But one of them is that your heart actually gets stronger and larger, which means that it gets better at Doing its job basically Whereas maybe it had to beat 70 times per minute before To to spread all the blood to pump all the blood to all the tissues now that it's a little bit bigger a little bit stronger It might only have to be 60 or even 50 times per minute in order just to do the same job because it's just a stronger heart so as an athlete one of the ways that you can measure your progress long term is By looking at your heart and you should probably if you're really serious about your running you should invest in a You know a watch with a heart rate monitor like this is the Garmin Forerunner 630 and quick note. I'll put a link in the description It's like an affiliate link if you want to check out the watch if you want to buy it You can click that link and we'll get a little bit of commission for sending you there But the price remains the same for you. I bought this watch my my own money though So I'm not sponsored by Garmin or anything like that, but you might want to consider getting that Or you can also take your pulse manually and we'll get to how to do that soon Because that allows you to Track your heart rate during training So obviously when you're running or doing some exercise your heart rate goes up because the demand of the muscles goes up They need more fuel. They need more oxygen. They produce more waste So there the blood has to you know circulate faster and therefore the heart has to pump faster That's why it goes up when you're when you're running and now if you're looking at your heart rate for a certain segment and You can you can see that over time Maybe your speed remains the same but your heart rate your average heart rate for that segment Goes down while your speed remains the same that means you're getting fitter Likewise if the heart rate remains the same over time But your speed goes up you're running faster and faster at the same effort. That's another way to gauge Hey, I'm getting I'm getting fitter Another thing about heart rate is that it's a good way to gauge your recovery, right? After your training after you're running after your exercising your heart rate comes down and there's a certain baseline and The time it takes for you to get down to that baseline is essentially a measure of your fitness And also something to pay attention to when it comes to recovery because if you're not fully recovered from last the last workout It you know, that's a good idea to know so you're not heading into another workout Not fully recovered from the last one. You'll also notice that as you're getting fitter The time it takes for you when let's say when you're stopping training like you finish your run You take your heart rate then two minutes later. You take it again and and how much it drops In those two minutes. It's also a measure of fitness So the fitter you are the steeper that curve will get the quicker your body returns to baseline But there's a deeper baseline yet, which is your true resting heart rate Resting heart rate is just what it sounds like. It's it's your heart rate when you're resting So when you're waking up in the morning, that's really when you're at your most restful in the 24 hours that's when you want to take your heart rate and Do it over, you know a week when you're not training much Maybe a holiday week or something like that to establish, you know, what's your baseline? What what is the lowest heart rate that you typically get during the morning? Once this baseline is established, you can now look at you can now take your heart rate every morning and See how deviates from the baseline So you'll notice that in periods of heavy training your resting heart that will stay a little bit higher than then your baseline And this is a sign that you're training hard But can also be a sign that something is wrong in the body like if you're getting sick or something or maybe you're training too hard Even so it's a good way to sort of gauge that gauge your recovery basically. So generally the guidelines is as follows If your resting heart rate is about five beats higher than your baseline, it's kind of a red flag It's kind of a saying hey, you should pay attention to what's going on You know, you're probably not fully recovered from your last workout. You should probably take it a little bit easier today in training Just be aware whereas if it's 10 beats above your baseline, then you know something is definitely up You're definitely not recovered from your last workout, or maybe you're even getting sick 10 beats higher than normal you should probably consider skipping today's workout and just doing a rest day instead so Certainly paying attention to resting heart rate is a great way to sort of gauge your recovery and use that on a day-to-day basis to gauge your training to decide whether or not you should train hard or easy and Learn about your body now whether or not you have a heart rate monitor or not There's also another way to do it and that is to take your pulse manually And if you're doing your morning resting heart rate, even if you do have a heart rate monitor You should probably just do it manually anyway. It's just easier And here's how you do it