Average Heart Rate During Exercise for a 40 Year Old

Although everyone's body functions differently under the stresses of physical exercise, there are some general guidelines you should follow when trying to determine your own exercise intensity. As a 40-year old, you want to pay close attention to your heart rate when you exercise, as staying in a safe range is important to avoid health complications. You should strive for 30 minutes of moderate exercise per day as often as you can, according to the American Heart Association.

  1. Target Heart Rate

    • Measuring the average heart rate during exercise is a moot point if you don't know the intensity of the exercise. How hard your heart works during a workout largely determines its effects on your body. The American Heart Association recommends that most people stay within a safe target heart-rate range between 50 and 85 percent of their maximum heart rate. The most common formula used to estimate maximum heart rate is to subtract your age from 220. This would put a 40-year-old man's maximum heart rate at 180 beats per minute.

    Gender and Heart Rate

    • For a long time, the American Heart Association has recommended the same maximum heart-rate formula for both men and women, but recent research has called that practice into question. According to researchers at Chicago's Northwestern Medicine, women should use a different formula to lower the target heart rate and ease their workouts. A woman can find a more accurate measure of her maximum heart rate by subtracting 88 percent of her age from 206. This would put a 40-year-old woman's maximum heart rate at roughly 171 beats per minute.

    Other Factors

    • Gender and exercise intensity aren't the only factors that can affect your heart rate at a measurable level. Your level of fitness plays a large role in determining your body's response to exercise. The more fit you are, the lower your heart rate will be during a workout. If you're overtrained, your resting heart rate will be higher, as your body hasn't had sufficient time to recover from the previous training session. Additionally, environmental factors such as hot weather can shoot your heart rate up by 20 to 40 beats per minute.

    Monitoring Methods

    • Measuring your heart rate isn't as complicated as you might think. To get an estimate on the fly, you can take your pulse on the inside of your wrist for six seconds and then multiply that number by 10. Alternatively, you can get a more accurate picture of your heart rate by using a heartrate monitor worn around your wrist or chest. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, your instinctive idea of how hard you're working tends to be remarkably accurate without the use of monitoring devices. If you feel like you're pushing too hard, you probably are.