Low resting HR - high when exercising. Is this safe for me?

[MattyW]

Ok, so I'm nearly 50, overweight for the vast majority of my life and sometimes obese, but not quite obese at present.  Otherwise I'd say I'm reasonably healthy, but not very active.  Anyway, I'm enjoying my new Fitbit Surge that I bought a couple of days ago, and I'm hoping to get more active.  Now my resting HR is a bit low - around 50 or so, and  as far as I know it's always been like that.  Yesterday I decided to go for a run in order to complete my 10,000 steps.  I haven't run for a few years, but I did it for a few months maybe 6 or 7 years ago.  Anyway, I took it fairly easy and ran a couple of miles at a slow pace - it took me about 22 minutes, so no Olympics yet.  When I looked at my HR chart , I see that it averaged 171 and went as high as 186 when I was going uphill.  When I got home, it went back below 100 soon enough, but took quite a while to get down to 50.  Now my question is this: was I overdoing it?  It certainly felt OK at the time but it's got me worried and I wouldn't want to snuff it in my first week.

[emili]

hello @MattyW and welcome. I will strongly urge you to ask you physician this question only because any response you get here is based on opinion and self experience, not medical knowledge. So here goes the first opinion... as long as your heart rate decreases quickly from its peak/cardio number you are OK. If it stays elevated for a longer period of time, combined with difficulty breathing- you are not OK. I don't think the concern is how low does it go- how quickly, its how quickly does it start to go low. Your resting heart rate is calc'd when you are truly at rest. Just because you stopped running, doesn't put your body at rest. Again, based on what I have read and my experience- not medical advice-  my work couldn't be further from medical.

[Colinm39]

@MattyW I would take it easy to start.. It took me many years to put on weight and as my late doctor said "Remember how long it took you to put on the weight, take it gradual when you are losing", and he always added, "eat 20% less".  How true. Also on the wrist HR's I get about 20% higher HR on exertion exercises which doesn't equate to me Polar. I find them extremely accurate at rest and asleep but I have a genetic RHR of 55. But every time I get up and walk, the Charge HR spikes to about 90 bpm when my measured pulse at the same time is around 70. I would check that first and be comfortable with the device.

But recovery heart rate is an excellent measure and the graph below shows me for the last 15 years and the average gradient is still the same even though the peak is dropping. But recovery heart rate is not checked via the Fitbit.. Use your fingers on the wrist or neck as suggested in this article.  See this link.

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@MattyW wrote:

Ok, so I'm nearly 50, overweight for the vast majority of my life and sometimes obese, but not quite obese at present.  Otherwise I'd say I'm reasonably healthy, but not very active.  Anyway, I'm enjoying my new Fitbit Surge that I bought a couple of days ago, and I'm hoping to get more active.  Now my resting HR is a bit low - around 50 or so, and  as far as I know it's always been like that.  Yesterday I decided to go for a run in order to complete my 10,000 steps.  I haven't run for a few years, but I did it for a few months maybe 6 or 7 years ago.  Anyway, I took it fairly easy and ran a couple of miles at a slow pace - it took me about 22 minutes, so no Olympics yet.  When I looked at my HR chart , I see that it averaged 171 and went as high as 186 when I was going uphill.  When I got home, it went back below 100 soon enough, but took quite a while to get down to 50.  Now my question is this: was I overdoing it?  It certainly felt OK at the time but it's got me worried and I wouldn't want to snuff it in my first week.

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