Heart Rate Recovery?
 

Some say Heart Rate Recovery is only good if you exercise to exhaustion or failure, and then only test it after 60 seconds. So if you ran all out until your heart rate was 170 as an example, you should check your heart rate in 60 seconds and it should have dropped to 150.

Other things I have read and talked to others about says you should check it after 120 seconds and it should have dropped at least 30 bpm.

The only health report I could find that was stated on multiple web sites is the exercise to your maximum and then check your heart rate in 60 seconds and if you heart rate dropped more than 12 points you are at less than 1% risk of a heart problem.

So, where are all of these other things coming from, or am I just not finding these other reports?

Do you only need to check after you work to maximum heart rate, or can you do the max heart rate during your run, and then look at it in 60 seconds. Does this mean to go from running at 7.0 mph and dropping to a walk at 4.5 mph or immediately sitting down in a resting position?

I can't speak about what any health report say, but from my experience as a cyclist which may be different than a runner, here are some observations from my training.

While doing anything from V02 max intervals with a kick at the end to anaerobic intervals, if my HR was within 5 bpm or so of max, after 1 min of light spinning/coasting, HR would drop around 60 bpm. Usually, the drop will be consistant for 5-8 intervals and then, if doing more, the drop isn't so quick depending on the type of interval and how rested I was coming into the session. Spinning is essentially a slow walk to compared to running and IIRC while doing track intervals decades ago, we would walk or jog to recover.

What you are trying to do with the HR recovery protocol is to try and gauge your fitness. It really doesn't matter what you do as long as you keep it consitent and control for variables. My fitness test, for example, is a 30 minute run at a HR of 136. I use the same treadmill at the gym every time. I do it about once a month. I can tell by my pace if I'm fitter or not.

Many things affect recovery, I know that heat/humidity has a big affect on me. Right now it is cool and reasonably dry and in 30s from a hard effort I will recover ~20% MHR. In the summer with the heat I can have the same fitness level and this will drop to 10% MHR. The only way to use this to measure fitness is if you can really control and repeat the experiment the same way as kaun is doing.

The article I keep finding is about having less than 1% chance of a heart related incident, if you heart rate drops over 12 beats in less than 60 seconds, but I never found if they are testing the people to a maximum heart rate and how that was relating to the fitness level of the person.

As many health professionals are viewing this section, I thought there might be some discussion on what new information is available. I think this information was published in 1999, but not sure.

I looked this up on 'uptodate'. Basically, more studies are needed and general guidelines cannot be formed with the limited number of studies available. Here is the info:

Heart rate recovery after exercise — Delayed heart rate slowing after exercise, may provide important prognostic information. The definitions of impaired heart rate slowing have varied in different studies from ≤12 to ≤18 beats/min at one minute [19-22] to ≤22 to ≤42 beats/min at two minutes [23-25] . The reduction in heart rate recovery is probably a reflection of decreased vagal reactivation.

The predictive value of delayed heart rate recovery was illustrated in a study of 2428 patients without heart failure or prior bypass surgery who were referred for exercise testing with myocardial perfusion imaging; 90 percent had no prior known coronary disease [19] . After a six year follow-up, failure of the heart rate to fall rapidly (defined as 12 beats/min or less) while the patient was exercising lightly during the one minute "cool down phase" was associated with an increase in overall mortality (show figure 3). This relationship persisted after adjustment for standard cardiovascular risk factors, changes in heart rate during exercise, the use of medications, exercise capacity, and the presence or absence of myocardial perfusion defects (adjusted relative risk 2.0).

In a follow-up study of 9454 subjects at the same institution, mortality at 5.2 years was independently predicted by both abnormal heart rate recovery and an intermediate or high Duke treadmill score (8 versus 2 percent in those with a low score) [20] . There was no interaction between these two predictors. The predictive value of delayed heart rate recovery persisted after the angiographic severity of coronary disease was taken into account [21] . (See "Duke treadmill score" below).

The heart rate response after exercise also has prognostic value in patients who undergo exercise echocardiography who lie down immediately (rather than having a cool down phase) after exercise cessation. A slowed rate of heart rate recovery (≤18 beats/min) independently predicts increased mortality [22] .

The 2002 ACC/AHA guideline update for exercise testing concluded that further study is required to define the role of these heart rate responses in relation to traditional parameters [10] .

Here are a few of the reference article to the above quotation if you care to research them further:

Elhendy, A, Mahoney, DW, Khandheria, BK, et al. Prognostic significance of impairment of heart rate response to exercise: impact of left ventricular function and myocardial ischemia. J Am Coll Cardiol 2003; 42:823.
Cole, CR, Blackstone, EH, Pashkow, FJ, et al. Heart-rate recovery immediately after exercise as a predictor of mortality. N Engl J Med 1999; 341:1351.
Nishime, EO, Cole, CR, Blackstone, EH, et al. Heart rate recovery and treadmill exercise score as predictors of mortality in patients referred for exercise ECG. JAMA 2000; 284:1392.
Vivekananthan, DP, Blackstone, EH, Pothier, CE, Lauer, MS. Heart rate recovery after exercise is a predictor of mortality, independent of the angiographic severity of coronary disease. J Am Coll Cardiol 2003; 42:831.
Watanabe, J, Thamilarasan, M, Blackstone, EH, Thomas, JD. Heart rate recovery immediately after treadmill exercise and left ventricular systolic dysfunction as predictors of mortality: the case of stress echocardiography. Circulation 2001; 104:1911.
Shetler, K, Marcus, R, Froelicher, VF, et al. Heart rate recovery: validation and methodologic issues. J Am Coll Cardiol 2001; 38:1980.
Cole, CR, Foody, JM, Blackstone, EH, Lauer, MS. Heart rate recovery after submaximal exercise testing as a predictor of mortality in a cardiovascularly healthy cohort. Ann Intern Med 2000; 132:552.
Mora,S, Redberg, RF, Sharrett, AR, Blumenthal, RS. Enhanced risk assessment in asymptomatic individuals with exercise testing and Framingham risk scores. Circulation 2005; 112:1566.

Thanks. I think what I am doing to test myself is similar, but not the exact same thing. Close enough for what I was trying to accomplish. Going from Obese, to where I am now, I know that I was in the bad range 4 years ago, but now I am much better and nowhere near what they have as a bad range.

I figured it was a beginning study many years ago, and they just haven't done any more studies that have been published.

Thanks for the information, it was greatly appreciated.

Good ref info Wabbit. The study by Lauer, et al., was through the Cleveland Clinic, I believe. Testing there was for an older, non-athletic group of people and nothing near max heart rates. I think that deep within the Polar site there may be some good info on HRR in athletes.

I agree that it's probably best to set up your own, repeatable protocol. I think it's easiest to do it on a treadmill where you can get up to some high, but safe percent of max hr and then immediately dial it down to a slow walking pace. I've done this from time to time on an informal basis, and the results are pretty consistent with my level of fitness at the time.

That is what I am going to continue to do. I did a 5k run to see what my heart did, and then today did a 10 k run and the results were similar, but my heart came back down quicker with the 5k compared to the 10 k. I doubt they had the non-athletes run a 10k in "X" time frame to get their heart rate up for a long period of time.

Again, thanks for the input.

good explanation, makes sense.

So, how many people are doing this similar test on their own to see where they are, and how often are you doing this?