Heart rate can serve us for two purposes:

• “Total physical index” – can show how “fit” you are. Adult humans have usually resting heart rate in between 60 and 90 beats per minute (infants and children have higher resting heart rates). Let’s stop and think for a minute, what is heart rate? It’s the number of times a heart needs to contract so that whole body would get blood, of course measured for some predefined time (usually a minute). Meaning, a stronger heart will send more blood each time and therefore number of beats will decrease. In fact, athletes usually have lower resting heart rate (marathon runners and swimmers can reach ~35 bpm). But not only athletes, usual people who start training can lower heart rate. I had clients who lowered their resting heart rate from 90 to 70 in a half year. There are theories telling that human heart is contracting about 3 milliard times during human life. Therefore, the lower resting heart rate the better chances that you’ll live longer. But’ I haven’t met any medical researches that support this theory.
  
  In conclusion, you should see you resting heart rate decreasing over time (this is of course until a certain point that can be 60 or 50 bpm depending on intensity of training and genetics).
  
  Note: genetics influences on your resting heart rate, while some people start with 90 bpm others have 60bpm. But, this is something we can’t change, therefore I haven’t elaborated on this.
  
  

  How to measure resting heart rate?

  
  The best way is to measure in the morning’s right after wake up, preferably after night sleep’s where you had enough sleep (Saturday or Sunday morning’s). If you wake up with an alarm clock, after shutting it down rest for a short while (hearing alarm clock will probably increase your heart rate) and than measure. Count the number of beats per a minute and it’s highly recommended to write it down in you training dairy, along with the current date (for more on training diary see: training diary).
• Aerobics intensity estimator (for other aerobics intensity estimators please see: Aerobics workout intensity measurements). During aerobic workout heart rate can be used as indication of how intense the workout is (higher intensity will lead to higher heart rate). What should my heart rate be (during aerobic workout)? For the answer see: heart rate formulas.

How to measure heart rate?

Many methods can be used to measure heart rate (HR). Commonly used methods include measurement of the pulse at the fingers or wrist, measurement of pulse pressure at the neck (carotid artery) or wrist (radial artery) and measurement of electrical activity of the heart at the chest. Measuring can be done automatically (heart rate monitors) or manually. Usually manual measuring of heart rate is done either for one minute or fifteen seconds duration. If you are looking for resting heart rate than one minute intervals are used. When you are looking for heart rate during activity (while jogging) than fifteen seconds intervals used. Usually the result is average several fifteen seconds intervals multiplied by four.