Your maximum heart rate is, by definition, the fastest your heart can possibly beat. If a watch tells you that your max is 180 beats per minute, and then you go for a run and your heart is beating at 190 beats per minute, you haven’t gone “over” your max. You have simply found out that 180 isn’t your max at all. Your actual max must be at least 190.
But there are problems with that formula, and even with the alternative equations that have been proposed to replace it. There is no formula that can tell you what your own personal max heart rate actually is.
Why you shouldn’t trust any max heart rate formula
Think about how you shop for shoes. You don’t tell an app that you’re 5 feet 6 inches tall, and then trust it if it says that the average 5-foot-6 person wears a size 8 shoe. You need to try on different shoes, or at least measure your feet. Maybe you’re a size 6. Maybe you’re a size 9. It doesn’t matter at all what size the average person wears, because plenty of people will have larger or smaller feet than the average.
It’s the same for max heart rates. The idea of “calculating” a max heart rate has become so widespread that people assume the calculation is correct, or at least very close. But check out this graph from a 2012 study where researchers measured the actual maximum heart rates of over 3,000 people. (The lines represent two of the supposedly more accurate max heart rate formulas.)
Credit: Nes et al, 2012, Age-predicted maximal heart rate in healthy subjects: The HUNT Fitness StudyThe same study also found that the formulas get even further from accurate as you get older. Check out the averages they found for different age groups:
Age 30 to 39: 189 plus or minus 10.1
Age 50 to 58: 176 plus or minus 11.6
Age 70+: 164 plus or minus 12.4
And while I have a higher max heart rate than most people my age, there are also plenty of folks who have a lower heart rate than the formulas would predict. Bottom line: Not only is there a wide range in what’s normal, but the common formulas get less and less accurate the older people get. I would not consider any heart rate calculation to be accurate enough for setting your own personal zones or exercise targets.
I feel like I should say something here about the mysteries of the heart being unknowable. (Surely some poet has beaten me to it.) The truth is that age alone doesn’t determine a person’s max heart rate, so no matter what numbers you use to create an age-based formula, you’re just not going to get a useful result. If there were other obvious relationships, like if your weight or exercise habits affected your max, surely a more accurate formula would be possible. But people differ in their max heart rates for reasons we don't entirely understand, just like they differ in their shoe sizes, so this doesn’t seem to be a problem that math can solve.
What to do instead of relying on a max heart rate calculation
Because of the problems above, reputable organizations have mostly backed away from the idea of “calculating” your max heart rate. Runner’s World took down its target heart rate calculator. The American Council on Exercise, one of the major organizations that issues personal training certifications, instructs trainers not to use max heart rate calculations, but to do real-world tests to help clients match their own heart rates to appropriate intensities of exercise. (I’m certified through ACE, and can confirm that this is what’s in the textbook.)
If you want to put a number on that, you can do a submaximal talk test. The informal way is to just notice what number you see on your watch when you can no longer speak comfortably; the more formal way is this treadmill test.
How to test your max heart rate
FIrst, I'll tell you how you don't find it: you don't start cold and then attempt to sprint at max effort until you gas out 10 seconds later. Your heart rate will spike, but it won't get anywhere near your max in such a short effort. Your heart needs time to get up to speed, and once you really start pushing you need that hard effort to be sustained for at least a few minutes, as you push harder and harder. With that in mind, here are a few different ways of finding your real-world max heart rate.
Jog for 10 to 15 minutes to warm up.
As soon as you get to the top, jog back down and repeat.
If you don’t have a smartwatch, you can measure your pulse with two fingers on your neck at the top of each hill repeat. The highest number you see is your max.
Warm up, and then do three four-minute intervals
Warm up thoroughly ("so you start sweating," they say). A 10 to 15 minute warmup as above should do the trick.
Repeat the four-minute hard interval again, and then another three minutes of active recovery.
The highest number you see on your heart rate monitor (or, again, what you measure by hand at the end) is your max.
If you're experienced, use a race to estimate your max heart rate
If you start at a challenging pace and then push the pace slightly as you go, finishing in an extended near-sprint as you approach the finish line, you’re likely to hit your max or something pretty close to it. An FTP test on a bike or a 5K race will often look exactly like that, so if you’re an experienced runner or cyclist, you can probably just look at the heart rate from your last hard race, and consider that number to be more or less your max.
All that said, heart rate numbers are only as good as the training they guide you to do, so whether you should use heart rate percentages to run your workouts depends on whether those mathematically guided workouts are helping you get faster, stronger and healthier. If you work best without numbers, that’s fine; if you do use numbers, make sure they’re accurate.
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