Target Heart Rate Calculator

Target heart rate = (maximum heart rate − resting heart rate) × intensity + resting heart rate · maximum heart rate = 220 − age

age

Your age in years. It enters through the estimate of maximum heart rate, which is 220 minus your age

resting heart rate

Your pulse after five quiet minutes, sitting down — the number this whole method turns on (bpm)

intensity

How hard you mean to work, as a fraction of the reserve: 0.40 where moderate begins, 0.60 where vigorous begins, 0.89 at the top of the vigorous band

target heart rate

What the formula returns: the pulse to stay above (or below) for that intensity (bpm)

Use it when you want a band to train inside rather than a single number to hit, and when your resting pulse is a number you trust — that is what the reserve method is for. The alternative on most gym walls and in most watches works from a percentage of maximum heart rate alone: simpler, and it needs no second measurement, but it hands the same zone to someone who slept badly, drank three coffees and is coming down with something as to the same person on a good morning. With no resting rate to hand, the reserve method still runs — every line moves by less than the change in the resting rate itself, so a stand-in of 60 bpm leaves most adults within a few beats. What this page is not for is judging a resting pulse: a low one in a trained person is ordinary, and nothing here calls it anything.

1. Age 30, resting pulse 60

   1. Maximum: 220 − 30 = 190 bpm
   2. Reserve: 190 − 60 = 130 bpm — the part of your heart rate you can actually train in
   3. Moderate starts at the 40% mark of the reserve: 0.40 × 130 = 52, plus the resting 60 = 112 bpm
   4. Vigorous starts at the 60% mark: 0.60 × 130 = 78, plus 60 = 138 bpm
   5. The top of the vigorous band is the 89% mark: 0.89 × 130 = 115.7, plus 60 = 175.7, which rounds to 176 bpm

   These are the defaults this page opens with, and they are also the row for age 30 in the chart below — which is the whole reason that chart is pinned to a resting rate of 60. Everything on the page can be checked against this one set of five numbers.

2. Age 30, resting pulse 75

   1. Same age, so the maximum does not move: 220 − 30 = 190 bpm
   2. Reserve: 190 − 75 = 115 bpm
   3. Moderate starts at 0.40 × 115 = 46, plus 75 = 121 bpm
   4. Vigorous starts at 0.60 × 115 = 69, plus 75 = 144 bpm
   5. The top: 0.89 × 115 = 102.35, plus 75 = 177.35, which rounds to 177 bpm

   Fifteen beats of resting pulse moved the lower line up by 9 and the top line by 1. That is the arithmetic of the method rather than a mistake: every line sits at 1 − intensity beats per beat of resting pulse, so the 40% line moves 0.60 for each beat and the 89% line only 0.11. Measured after climbing stairs instead of after sitting still, the band you get is wrong by about that much at the bottom and almost not at all at the top.

3. Age 60, resting pulse 60

   1. Maximum: 220 − 60 = 160 bpm
   2. Reserve: 160 − 60 = 100 bpm
   3. Moderate starts at 0.40 × 100 = 40, plus 60 = 100 bpm
   4. Vigorous starts at 0.60 × 100 = 60, plus 60 = 120 bpm
   5. The top: 0.89 × 100 = 89, plus 60 = 149 bpm

   Thirty years on, two things have happened to the band: it sits lower, and it is narrower. The distance from the moderate floor to the vigorous ceiling is always 0.49 of the reserve — 64 beats at age 30 and 49 beats here — so the same workout carries you much further into the band than it used to.

Everything on this page is an estimate worked out from an age and a pulse, and the page never sees your actual heart rate, so it cannot tell you whether you are inside the band while you train — that takes a monitor or two fingers on a wrist mid-session. The maximum heart rate is the softest number here: 220 − age is the most widely printed approximation, not the result of a study, and a 2001 meta-analysis of 351 studies found age explains most of the variation and put the line at 208 − 0.7 × age instead — which lands lower than 220 − age under 40 and higher over it. Individual maxima scatter well to either side of any of these lines, watches and treadmills use their own versions, and none of them is a measurement. The resting pulse has the opposite problem: it is a real measurement, but a volatile one, and coffee, nicotine, a fever, a bad night or a recent flight of stairs all push it up, which tilts the whole band with it. If you take a medicine that slows the heart — a beta blocker, for instance — both the maximum and the band are lower than these formulas say, and no calculator of this kind can adjust for that. This is a page for healthy adults planning ordinary aerobic training; pregnancy, a heart condition, rehabilitation and children are all outside what it can speak to, and none of it is a reason to change a prescribed treatment or a doctor's advice.

What is a target heart rate?

It is the pulse you aim to hold while you train, and the useful form of it is a band rather than a number: heart rate drifts with hills, heat and intervals, so a single target is a figure you will miss constantly. This page prints three edges of the two bands most exercise guidance is written around — moderate intensity from 40% of your heart rate reserve, vigorous intensity from 60%, and the top of the vigorous band at 89% — so that you have a floor to stay above in a steady session and a ceiling not to sit at all afternoon.

How do I measure my resting heart rate?

Sit quietly for five minutes first, then find your pulse with the index and middle fingers — never the thumb, which has a beat of its own — either on the inside of the wrist below the thumb or on the side of the neck beside the windpipe. Count for 30 seconds and double it, or count a full minute if the beat feels irregular. The steadiest reading of the day is the one taken just after waking, before getting up, and it is worth two or three mornings rather than one. Coffee, nicotine, a fever, dehydration, a bad night's sleep and any recent activity all push the number up, and the page above shows how much that matters: fifteen beats of error moves the moderate floor by 9 bpm.

Why use heart rate reserve instead of a percentage of maximum heart rate?

Because heart rate reserve includes your resting pulse, and maximum heart rate does not. The reserve is the span between the two, so in the Karvonen formula a fitter person with a lower resting pulse gets a wider reserve and a lower band for the same effort — which matches what happens when you actually get fit. A percentage of maximum gives you the same zone on a rested morning and on a morning when you are coming down with something, because it never looks at the second number at all. The trade is that the reserve method needs a measurement you have to go and take, and that a bad reading propagates into the whole band.

Why is my band lower than the chart on the gym wall?

Three common reasons, and none of them is a mistake on your part. Your resting pulse enters this calculation and not the gym poster's, so a resting rate above the 60 bpm this page assumes pulls the moderate floor upward and a lower one pulls it down. The other reason is the maximum: 220 − age is the approximation everyone prints, and a meta-analysis of 351 studies put the same line at 208 − 0.7 × age instead — at 30 that is 187 against 190 here, and at 60 it is 166 against 160. This page keeps 220 − age precisely so that its numbers reconcile with the ones in front of you, and tells you the difference rather than quietly using the other formula. The third is the top of the vigorous band: this page takes it from the ACSM position stand, which prints 60–89% of reserve, while plenty of charts stop at 85%. At 30 with a resting pulse of 60 the two put the ceiling at 176 and 171 — five beats apart, and this page prints the higher of the two rather than splitting the difference.

Is a resting pulse of 55 too low?

This page will not judge it, and that is deliberate. A low resting pulse is ordinary in anyone who trains — endurance athletes sit in the 40s — so a badge telling a fit person their pulse is abnormally slow would be wrong in exactly the case where the number is best. What matters here is not whether 55 is good but whether 55 is your usual figure: if you normally sit at 55 and measure 80 one morning, the band above is 15 beats too high for that day, and the cause is far more likely to be a fever, a late night or dehydration than anything to do with fitness. A resting pulse that is persistently higher than your own normal, or one that comes with dizziness or breathlessness, is a question for a doctor rather than a calculator.

What if I do not know my resting heart rate?

Measure it — it takes a minute and a half, and the method above is the whole procedure. If you would rather see a number first, leave the field at 60, which is what this page opens with and is close to the adult average; every line moves by less than one beat per beat of resting pulse, so for most people the band you get differs from your own by single digits. You can see the size of the effect in the second example above: a resting rate of 75 against 60 lifts the moderate floor from 112 to 121 and leaves the top of the vigorous band essentially where it was.

• The effects of training on heart rate; a longitudinal study — Karvonen MJ, Kentala E, Mustala O — Annales Medicinae Experimentalis et Biologiae Fenniae, 1957
• Quantity and quality of exercise for developing and maintaining cardiorespiratory, musculoskeletal, and neuromotor fitness in apparently healthy adults: guidance for prescribing exercise — Garber CE et al. — American College of Sports Medicine position stand, Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 2011
• Age-predicted maximal heart rate revisited — Tanaka H, Monahan KD, Seals DR — Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 2001