Resting Heart Rate
Resting Heart Rate (HRrest) is how fast your heart beats when you are not expending any energy beyond simply being alive. Finding your HRrest is easy; just check your heart rate while sitting still or lying down. Early morning is a good time, before any exercise or taken caffeine, both of which will raise your HRrest. A low HRrest is normally a sign of fitness, as endurance training tends to increase the size of your heart, and a large heart needs to beat less often to pump the same amount of blood. HRrest is used to calculate Heart Rate Reserve.
Measuring Resting Heart Rate
It is possible to take your pulse with your finger, but most people find this tricky and inconvenient. A Heart Rate Monitor will provide an accurate and simple way of checking your heart rate, but putting one on first thing in the morning (possibly before you get out of bed) is a bit of a pain. A blood pressure meter will also record heart rate, but can be a little noisy and awkward to put on. My preferred approach is to use a simple Pulse Oximeter, which is the easiest technique. Optical Heart Rate Monitors included in watches can be fairly accurate for resting heart rate, even if they have problems during exercise. Many watches and rings now report an overnight resting heart rate automatically, although the accuracy of consumer wearables varies[1].
Testing Position
There's no consensus on which position to measure resting heart rate, with about half of studies using sitting and about half using lying down[2]. Note that Heart Rate when standing is Zero Power Heart Rate
Zero Power (Orthostatic) Heart Rate
While resting heart rate is well established, there is often a difference between this value and the heart rate when generating no power output, such as sitting stationary on a bike or standing still. While this difference is small, it does change the calculation for Heart Rate Reserve.
Resting Heart Rate for Monitoring Training
Resting heart rate is often used to judge recovery, but it needs care.
- A single morning is mostly noise. The day-to-day typical error of resting heart rate is about 10%, against a smallest worthwhile change of about 2%[3]. Look at the trend over several days rather than one reading.
- Overload raises it, but not reliably. A meta-analysis found that short-term overload raised resting heart rate moderately, but concluded that heart rate changes need to be interpreted alongside other signs and symptoms[4]. In cyclists on a heavy 8-day event, resting heart rate did not separate those who became functionally overreached from those who were merely acutely fatigued[5].
- Illness is a common cause of a rise. In data from 28,175 users of an HRV app, illness raised resting heart rate by about 6%[6]; the data came from HRV4Training, whose developer is the first author. A sustained rise of several beats with other symptoms is a plausible illness flag.
- Heart rate can look better when you are fatigued. During heavy training, heart rate measures can move in the direction that suggests better fitness, so always read them alongside how you feel. See Training Readiness.
See Also
- Heart Rate for an overview
- Maximum Heart Rate
- Heart Rate Reserve
- Heart Rate Variability
- Orthostatic Heart Rate Test
- Training Readiness
- Pulse Oximeter
- Heart Rate Deflection
References
- ↑ Dial MB, Hollander ME, Vatne EA, Emerson AM, Edwards NA, Hagen JA. Validation of nocturnal resting heart rate and heart rate variability in consumer wearables. Physiological Reports, 2025, 13(16):e70527. doi:10.14814/phy2.70527 (Funding listed: Air Force Research Laboratory.)
- ↑ Paolo Palatini, Athanase Benetos, Guido Grassi, Stevo Julius, Sverre E Kjeldsen, Giuseppe Mancia, Krzystof Narkiewicz, Gianfranco Parati, Achille C Pessina, Luis M Ruilope, Alberto Zanchetti, Identification and management of the hypertensive patient with elevated heart rate: statement of a European Society of Hypertension Consensus Meeting, Journal of Hypertension, volume 24, issue 4, 2006, pages 603–610, ISSN 0263-6352, doi 10.1097/01.hjh.0000217838.49842.1e
- ↑ Buchheit M. Monitoring training status with HR measures: do all roads lead to Rome? Frontiers in Physiology, 2014, 5:73. doi:10.3389/fphys.2014.00073
- ↑ Bosquet L, Merkari S, Arvisais D, Aubert AE. Is heart rate a convenient tool to monitor over-reaching? A systematic review of the literature. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 2008, 42(9):709–714. doi:10.1136/bjsm.2007.042200
- ↑ ten Haaf T, van Staveren S, Oudenhoven E, Piacentini MF, Meeusen R, Roelands B, Koenderman L, Daanen HAM, Foster C, de Koning JJ. Prediction of functional overreaching from subjective fatigue and readiness to train after only 3 days of cycling. International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance, 2017, 12(Suppl 2):S2-87–S2-94. doi:10.1123/ijspp.2016-0404
- ↑ Altini M, Plews D. What is behind changes in resting heart rate and heart rate variability? A large-scale analysis of longitudinal measurements acquired in free-living. Sensors, 2021, 21(23):7932. doi:10.3390/s21237932 (Data from HRV4Training, developed by the first author.)
