Polar Heart Rate Monitor

Getting to Know the Polar Heart Rate Monitor

Regular physical fitness has become more pervasive in today's society because people have become more aware of the importance of staying physically healthy.

Twenty years ago, the majority of people thought that staying physically fit was only necessary for movie stars and athletes. Today, people understand that in order to stay healthier, it is important to start exercising more regularly and  to start eating a healthy diet.

Fitness tools like the Polar heart rate monitor can help average people like you and me in achieving our fitness goals within a shorter period of time. Tools like the Polar heart rate monitor can help both strength enthusiasts and endurance athletes achieve their peak performance levels by measuring the heart rate during exercise and  training workouts.

The beauty of such heart monitors is that these small and efficient devices can easily be worn on the hips or even across the chest. Polar heart rate monitors can be used on their own, or you can attach them to any smartphones with distance tracker applications.

If you have an iPhone, Blackberry, or Windows-based/Android device, you can connect your Polar heart rate monitor to these devices once you have a fitness tracking app like Endomondo installed.

The monitor will connect wirelessly via Bluetooth connection and will continuously send a signal to the distance tracker app on your mobile device.

So in the end, you can have a complete record of not only the distance you have run, but the calories burned as well as a measurement of your cardio-respiratory endurance (gauged by measuring your heart rate).

When you buy a Polar heart rate monitor, you also gain access to other benefits such as the Polar Personal Trainer service, which allows you to analyze your progress in detail.

Special fitness programs that involve cycling, running, and walking can also be measured with the Polar heart rate monitor. For people who lift weights like barbells, dumbbells and kettle-bells, using heart rate monitors can help to determine the optimal rest period in between active workout sets.

As you may already know, strength workouts are most effective if your body is in high gear throughout the majority of the workout. It is very difficult to determine the optimal rest period for strength workouts by just 'feeling' or guessing the time period needed.

If you want to maximize your workouts, use a heart rate monitor. The same principle applies to endurance athletes and cycling enthusiasts.

It is important to know when to cool down and when to speed up; these variable training phases differ from one person to another. An athlete who has been professionally cycling for five years will have a different cool down rate than someone who has only been cycling for two weeks.

A Heart Rate Monitor assists you in determining when to cool down (and for how long) before you attempt to increase the intensity level once again. Recovery is such an important concept in physical fitness because without proper recovery time, you will not be able to function at full capacity.