Do You Need a Smart Watch for Effective Cardio?

The conveniences of modern technology have helped to expose how wrong we have collectively been about several things. In the world of fitness and nutrition, technological advancements have helped to improve upon everything from the precise angles at which resistance movements should be performed to the precise ratios of nutrients needed to bring about the physiological changes you desire with greater speed

That’s all well and good, but then there’s the matter of gauging your effort level, especially when it comes to aerobic exercise. The world of consumer electronics has produced devices like heart rate monitors and smart watches that enable precision tracking of your heart rate to identify whether or not you’re falling within the optimal range for fitness. As impressive as this is, do you really need a wearable device in order to know if you’re engaging in proper aerobic exercise?

The Importance of Aerobic Activity

To begin with, it’s important to establish that aerobic activity isn’t considered a form of exercise that you can simply opt not to partake in. The American Heart Association recommends that everyone engage in 150 minutes of moderate aerobic activity, or 75 minutes of “vigorous” aerobic activity every week purely for the maintenance of adequate heart health.

Because cardiovascular exercise of this variety and duration has been prescribed as essential, correctly determining the boundaries of this range is vital for the sake of ensuring that you are engaging in activity that actually qualifies as aerobic. 

If you stray outside of the aerobic range, you may dramatically overrate your aerobic output either by doing things that technically burn calories without raising your heart rate enough to count toward your aerobic tally, or that are of a more strenuous nature while also being too short in duration.

The official list of benefits associated with this level of aerobic activity are myriad, and include a reduced risk of heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, dementia and Alzheimer’s, along with several types of cancer. Physically, aerobic output is also strongly linked with a reduced likelihood for obesity, and improved bone health and balance.

Heart Rate and Exercise

Assuming you’re using a heart rate monitor to guide your approach to aerobic training, its primary purpose will be to ensure that your heart rate is being sustained within the zone that is most conducive to your health throughout each training session. 

Your aerobic zone can be quickly estimated by taking the number 220 and subtracting your age from it to identify your maximum heart rate. From there, you can take 55 percent and 85 percent of that number to determine the low and high points of your aerobic zone. As an easy example, a 30-year-old would have a max heart rate of 190, with the low end of their aerobic zone at around 105, and a high point of close to 162. 

If you want to get a measure of your heart rate at any time, you can manually check your pulse at either your wrist or neck, count the number of heart beats for 10 seconds, and multiply that number by six. If the number falls within the low and high boundaries of your aerobic zone, you are on the right track.

In short, if you are engaging in sustained activity that maintains your heart rate between these numbers, then everything you are doing will chip away at the weekly aerobic time that you are recommended to indulge in by the AHA.

Perceived Level of Exertion

People have clearly been training for generations without the benefit of instruments that could neatly position their heart rate with an aerobic zone. Two of the most sensible reasons for this are the fact that your aerobic zone has such a wide window, and that all sustainable activity above a certain level exertion will eventually land within the aerobic window if it continues for long enough.

Thankfully, there are ways to quickly determine whether or not you are properly sustaining aerobic activity, if you are taking it too easy, or if you are wandering into the anaerobic zone. 

The latter matter is usually quite easy to discover: If you find it impossible to sustain an activity or pace beyond two minutes, then you have been taxing your anaerobic system. In fact, if you began your workout by sprinting, and decided to maintain your motion as long as possible, eventually, you would fall into steady-state aerobic exercise out of necessity.

The real question is usually some version of “How can I tell if I’m working hard enough?” If you are training at a pace where carrying on a continuous conversation would be challenging, but not entirely impossible, there’s a good chance you are in the aerobic zone. 

On the other hand, if such a conversation would be easy, you’re below your aerobic zone and need to pick up the pace. Then again, if any sort of conversation would be impossible, you’re definitely in the anaerobic zone, and should probably slow things down.

Being Smart Without the Watch

There is absolutely nothing wrong with fastening a smart watch to your wrist to ensure that you’re getting everything out of your training session that you’d hoped for. This is true no matter what type of training you’re involved in. All the same, people have been successfully feeling their way through aerobic training for centuries, and as long as you develop a feel for the sort of pace that you can maintain for 20 minutes or more, then fancy technology should be considered a luxury, and not a requirement.

Summary

1. The American Heart Association considers 150 minutes of weekly aerobic activity to be vital to sustaining proper heart health.

2. Aerobic training has been positively linked to a reduced risk of heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and several other major afflictions.

3. Smart phones and heart monitors are tools that can help you sustain your heart rate within the aerobic zone.

4. Without relying on special technology, you can manually check your heart rate by measuring your pulse at either your wrist or neck.

5. Another way to estimate your level of exertion is to gauge how difficult it would be for you to engage in a conversation; if such an act would be challenging but not impossible, you are likely in the aerobic training zone.

6. By relying on simple forms of manual assessment, you can easily determine whether or not you are training in the aerobic zone without depending on any forms of technology.