Determine the Heart Rate Numbers of Your Apple Watch
Your heart beats fast when you exercise and slower when you are resting or sleeping. Your Apple Watch measures your heart rate all day and wants to tell you all about it.
Some important caveats to everything we’re going to say: firstly, every person is different, so if your numbers are higher or lower than you expected, there is not necessarily something wrong with you. There are a wide range of normal ones.
More importantly, your Apple Watch is a dumb device; your heart is an important part of your body. Conditions exist that can lead to unusual results for the discussed heart rate values. If you are concerned that something is really wrong with you, stop googling your heart rate statistics and talk to a real health professional.
So. here’s what you can learn from the heart rate functions:
Current heart rate
It’s just what it sounds like: how fast your heart is currently beating, in beats per minute. If you are resting, the clock is measured from time to time. This is why the message “70 bpm, 9 minutes ago” may appear on the watch face. But when you open the heart rate app, a new reading is required.
The heart rate sensor can only measure readings between 30 and 210 beats per minute . This is more than enough for most of us, but if you can tell that you are nearing the limit (for example, you are a young person who sees around 210 during a workout), the watch may miss some of your highest or lowest values. …
What’s okay? Normal depends on what you are doing when taking the readings. If you are in bed, expect numbers similar to your resting heart rate. If you are exercising, we will discuss this below as well. If you have to have a number and you just sit around and do nothing special, usually from 60 to 100 .
Resting heart rate
This is your resting heart rate. Your heart rate usually drops while you sleep, so if you wear the watch at night, you may have a lower resting heart rate than if you only wear it during the day.
The more athletic you are, the stronger your heart will be. A strong heart does not need to beat very many times a minute to fill your body with fresh blood. Fit people tend to see lower numbers here than people who don’t exercise. As you get more athletic, you may find that your resting heart rate drops over time.
On the other hand, if your resting heart rate increases , something might be wrong. You may be overtraining (exercising so much that you feel exhausted), you may be sick or stressed.
What’s okay? This number should be slightly lower than what you see when you get up and walk – maybe 60 to 80 beats per minute for most of us, lower if you are really in good shape.
Average walking
This is the heart rate that the watch detects (averaged over the course of the day) when you are walking.
What’s okay? This number will be higher than your resting heart rate, but not super high. Mine is usually in the 70s or 80s, but mostly trips from my desk to the fridge. If you do a lot of brisk walking, a value between 110 and 120 is more typical.
Pulse workout
When you exercise, your heart beats harder, so this number is an indicator of how hard you’ve worked. I like to look at the heart rate graph to see how my effort level has changed over the course of a workout. For example, if you run at intervals, you can see your heart rate increase with each interval and decrease during the rest periods in between.
If you are wearing the watch during a few really intense workouts, the highest reading you see is likely to be your true maximum heart rate (or very close to it). Once you know this, you can calculate your exercise effort as a percentage of your maximum. (On iPhone, the Zones app can do this calculation for you and highlight colors for your workouts based on your level of effort.)
What’s okay? These numbers will be higher than your resting or walking heart rate if you do a cardio exercise such as running or cycling. If you lift weights or do yoga, all bets are canceled; some workouts can dramatically raise your heart rate, while others may not. Anything below your maximum heart rate is normal. (The maximum for most of us is between 160 and 200+)
Restoring heart rate
This is a special measurement that is taken for hours after you finish a workout. To get the best numbers here, take your time to finish your workout when you finish in real life.
The measurement is taken one minute after the end of the workout and then two minutes later. The result is a pair of numbers that tell you how many beats per minute your heart rate dropped after training. So, if you were running at 180 beats per minute and after a minute your heart rate was 160 beats per minute, that’s a 20 beats per minute drop.
The faster your heart rate returns to normal after exercise, the better. More prepared people will have a larger decline here, for example 30 instead of 20.
What’s okay? A decrease of about 20 beats per minute is normal. A drop in heart rate of less than 12 beats can be cause for concern , but again, this is a matter for your doctor.