Originally Posted by
Wogsterca
How accurate is accurate? If you take 2 men of the same age and it computes out to 136, with one actually being 134 and the other 138 and they both train as if it's 136 that's probably close enough for most of us here. Unless they are professional athlete level, in which case their coach is going to make sure he has an absolute, and it's worth the hundreds of dollars in medical tests to achieve that.
As others have said, the variation is much more than that. This is the result of a poll taken here last year:
View Poll Results: 50+ people .. What is your current Max HRVoters 130. This poll is closed
Max HR above 190 14 10.77% 180-189 34 26.15% 170-179 41 31.54% 160-169 20 15.38% 150-159 9 6.92% 149 or under 12 9.23%
The entire thread can be found
here. As can be seen, using 220-age is not "close enough for most of us here." Not by a long shot. And you don't have to be a pro to want reasonably accurate results. As they say, garbage in, garbage out.