What is a sign of better heart health, a low resting heart rate or a low
heart rate during exercise?

A low heart rate during intense exercise isn't a sign of fitness - it's actually a medical red flag. The true mark of a strong heart is how
slowly it beats when you do absolutely nothing.

A low resting heart rate is a gold standard indicator of a strong heart.

As the heart muscle gets stronger through cardiovascular exercise,
its left ventricle chamber slightly enlarges and pumps a larger volume
of blood with each contraction.

This increased stroke volume means the heart can beat fewer times
per minute to supply the body with the oxygen it needs at rest.

While a typical adult resting heart rate is between 60 and 100 beats
per minute, well-trained endurance athletes often sit in the 40s or 50s.

During physical exertion, the heart rate must increase to deliver
oxygen to working muscles. A heart that fails to accelerate appropriately during intense exercise suffers from chronotropic incompetence, the
very condition that makes a low maximum exercise heart rate a warning
sign.

What indicates superior fitness is not a low maximum heart rate, but a
lower heart rate at a specific submaximal workload.

If jogging at six miles per hour pushed a runner's heart rate to 160
beats per minute a year ago, but now only requires 135 beats per minute,
their cardiovascular efficiency has improved.

The heart is moving more blood with less effort.

The metric that best bridges exertion and rest is heart rate recovery,
which measures the speed at which the pulse plummets after stopping
a workout. A healthy, responsive autonomic nervous system quickly
withdraws adrenaline and reactivates the parasympathetic pathways
the moment the exercise ends.

A drop of 20 beats or more in the first minute after stopping indicates excellent cardiovascular health, while a sluggish recovery of fewer than
12 beats points to an overworked or inefficient system.

Full story: https://www.quora.com/What-is-a-sign-of-better-heart-health-a-low-resting-heart-rate-
or-a-low-heart-rate-during-exercise

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