Measuring Heart Rate
Staying withing your Target Heart Rate

Measuring heart rate is very simple. For those that need an easy method of measuring your heart rate, I've included this page in the Cardio section of the website because you'll need to know your heart rate to ensure you're not going too hard or too easy during your cardiovascular exercise.

I recommend different styles of cardio for muscle building goals and for fat loss goals and measuring heart rate ensures you are doing your cardio properly. You should always keep track of your cardiovascular activities in a log book and record your average heart rate along with other details.

If you don't have a heart rate monitor, you will have to calculate your heart rate by stopping during exercise and measuring it yourself. This is tedious and doesn't help much compared to having a monitor tell you what your heart rate is at all times.

The first thing you need to do in measuring heart rate is find your pulse somewhere on your body. My favorite place is on the left side of my face right under my jaw bone. I use the index and middle fingers on my right hand to measure my pulse under my left jaw bone. Once you find your pulse, you can easily measure your heart rate. Any place will work, though.


If you can find your pulse easily on your wrist, then use that location. The easiest place for you is the best place to measure your heart rate. Remember, you need to do this quickly so you can get back to your exercise immediately.

You'll need to have a watch or use a clock with a second hand. Your heart rate is based on the number of beats per minute. We won't be measuring your heart rate for a full minute, though. We can't afford to stop our cardiovascular exercise for a full minute while trying to measure our heart rates, right? So, we need a shorter time period to measure heart rate during our cardiovascular exercise.


Wouldn't it be easier measuring heart rate without having to stop and measure it yourself? You can do this if you get a watch to monitor it for you! Some of the watches can be as expensive as $500 for the serious runner and other athletes. I use a watch that cost me around $50 and it works great.


If you are serious about fat loss, you need to be doing cardiovascular exercise. Cardio just isn't the same without a heart rate monitor telling you exactly how hard you are working. I simply put my watch around the bar on any of the cardio machines so I can easily see my heart rate the entire cardio session.


You'll find the watch that I use as a recommended product in the Amazon link at the bottom of the page. I highly recommend this watch as I have been using it now for over a year. I'm addicted to having this watch in front of me during cardio. It makes it easy for me to adjust my exercise to burn more calories if needed!

You can measure your heart rate once you've found your pulse and you have your watch ready for measurement. Count the number of pulses during a 10 second time period on your watch or clock. Once you have that number, you simply multiply it by 6 to get your heart rate.

Let's say you measure 15 beats for a time period of 10 seconds. So, you multiply 15 times 6 to get a heart rate 0f 90 beats per minute.

This time, let's say you measure 20 beats during the 10 second time period. So, your heart rate is 20 times 6 = 120 beats per minute.

If you'd like to change your measurement period, that's fine. The calculations are very easy no matter what time period you choose. Choose a 6 second measurement period if you'd like. Then multiply the result by 10 to get your heart beats per minute. Remember, though, the longer time period the more accurate the measurement but the more time required to stop your exercise!


Choose any of the following time periods below for easy calculations:

5 second period, multiply result by 12
6 second period, multiply result by 10
10 second period, multiply result by 6
12 second period, multiply result by 5
15 second period, multiply result by 4
20 second period, multiply result by 3

You just need a simple and short time period for measuring your heart rate during cardio. You won't have to measure much. You just want to ensure a few times during your cardio exercise that you're close to your target heart rate. I always used 10 seconds because I see that time period as the perfect compromise.

There are devices for measuring heart rate during cardiovascular exercise. You won't have to stop and take your pulse during exercise to ensure your heart rate is in the correct range. These are my favorite simply because I always know what my heart rate is while exercising.


The whole point of this website is to help you make continuous progress in your fat loss and muscle building efforts. This means you will have to make weekly adjustments to your exercise program. You will need to adjust your cardio to keep the fat loss going! A heart rate device will allow you to easily make adjustments in your cardio program.

You can also do much more with most of the heart rate watches than simply measure your heart rate. Many watches will record your heart rate, give you an average heart rate for your workout, peak heart rates during your workout, and even count calories burned during your workout. These watches can be very useful to use with the WLC Program!


Wear your heart rate monitor during your cardio and always try to improve your cardiovascular exercise. Use the monitor to record calories for each cardiovascular workout. When the fat loss gets tough during fat loss cycles, increase the cardio duration or intensity to burn more calories instead of cutting calories too low.


I never like to go really low on calories because that's when the most muscle loss will occur. And we don't want to lose muscle! Use more cardio to lose fat rather than decreasing calories too low. Never decrease your daily calorie intake below 10 times your lean muscle mass in pounds. If you do, you are asking for muscle loss!


If you monitor and track your cardio throughout the weeks of the WLC Program, you'll know exactly what you need to do to lose more fat! That's what WLC is all about. We track, record, and measure everything so we know exactly what to do.


It's very simple to build muscle and lose fat when you know what to do! And that's what we do here. We log everything and use that data to make intelligent decisions with our complete weight lifting programs.