Heart rate recovery: a simple check on your fitness

Most people judge their fitness by how hard a workout feels. A more useful clue is what happens after you stop. Heart rate recovery has been doing the rounds again since a BBC Future feature last week, and it's one of my favourite things to get clients tracking, because it's free, quick and moves in the right direction as you get fitter.

What heart rate recovery is

Heart rate recovery is simply the difference between your pulse at the end of hard exercise and your pulse one minute later. When you train, your nervous system presses the accelerator. When you stop, it needs to switch to the brake. The quicker that switch happens, the faster your heart rate falls.

Fitter people usually make that switch faster. That's why it's a handy marker of how your cardio fitness is changing over time.

What the research found

The best-known study is from the Cleveland Clinic, published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1999. Researchers followed 2,428 adults for six years after an exercise test. A drop of 12 beats per minute or less in the first minute was counted as abnormal, and 26% of people fell into that group.

Those with a low recovery were about four times as likely to die during the study. Once the team allowed for age, sex, medicines, standard heart risk factors and fitness on the test, the risk was still about double.

Two cautions. These were people sent for heart tests for medical reasons, not a random group of gym-goers. And it shows a link, not that a slow recovery causes anything. It's a warning light, not a diagnosis.

How to check yours safely

The BBC piece describes a simple home version. Speak to your GP before trying it if you have a heart condition, high blood pressure, or you've been inactive for a long time, and don't do it unsupervised if you have a known heart problem. Stop straight away if you get chest pain or tightness, dizziness, or breathlessness that feels out of proportion to the effort.

1. Warm up for 5 to 10 minutes.
2. Do 3 to 5 minutes of hard but steady effort: running, a rower, a bike, or brisk step-ups on a sturdy step. You should be breathing hard and only able to say a few words.
3. As soon as you stop, check your pulse. A watch or chest strap makes it easy. Otherwise count the beats at your neck for 10 seconds and multiply by 6.
4. Sit down, wait exactly one minute, and check it again.
5. Take the second number from the first. That's your recovery.

According to the BBC article, a drop of at least 18 beats in the first minute is good, while fewer than 12 could point to problems down the line. Age and medicines such as beta blockers affect the number too. If yours is low, it's a reason to book a check with your GP, not to panic.

How to improve it

Here's the encouraging part. The BBC article notes that research has found heart rate recovery can improve with exercise programmes, and the experts it quotes recommend regular cardio. That lines up with the NHS guidelines: 150 minutes of moderate activity a week, or 75 minutes of vigorous activity, plus strength work on at least 2 days.

What I'd do with a client:

• Build an easy base. Two or three sessions a week of brisk walking, cycling, swimming or jogging at a pace where you can still talk.
• Add one harder session. Short intervals with full recovery, such as 30 seconds of mountain climbers or shadow boxing followed by 90 seconds easy, repeated 6 to 8 times.
• Keep lifting. Circuits of goblet squats and farmer carries with short rests work your heart and your muscles together.
• Retest every 4 to 6 weeks. Use the same test, the same time of day and the same kit, and write the number in your log. If the drop gets bigger, your fitness is moving the right way.

If you'd like cardio and strength plans with a log to track your numbers, you can try FitFitCity free for a week.

Your heart rate recovery isn't a pass or fail. It's a simple number you can watch improve.