What is my resting heart rate?

Your resting heart rate is the number of times your heart beats per minute while you are completely at rest. It is a vital measure of your cardiovascular health and a key component in setting your personal training zones.

A measure of a stronger heart

Your resting heart rate is a good indicator of your cardiovascular conditioning, and a lower rate is linked to better long-term health[1]. An average adult resting heart rate is between 60 and 100 beats per minute. As you exercise regularly, your heart muscle becomes stronger and more efficient, pumping more blood with each beat. Because it does more work per beat, it doesn't need to beat as often.

While you can be very fit and still have an average resting heart rate, elite endurance athletes often have resting rates in the 40s or even 30s[2]. This improvement lasts as long as you maintain your training.

Finding your baseline

Your true resting heart rate is measured while you are awake but completely relaxed, ideally in the morning before getting out of bed.

Most smartwatches track this automatically for you. Alternatively, if you wear a heart rate monitor during quiet moments—like reading or watching television—ZonePoints will identify the lowest sustained heart rate and suggest it as your resting baseline.

Awake vs. asleep

Your heart rate drops even further while you sleep. A sleeping heart rate is typically lower than your waking resting rate[3]. Using a sleeping heart rate as your resting rate will pull your zones down, making them artificially easy to reach. Be sure your resting baseline reflects your awake state.

Why accuracy matters for your zones

Because ZonePoints uses Heart Rate Reserve to calculate your effort, your resting rate is used to define the thresholds for all zones. If your resting rate in the app is set too high, your training zones are compressed and shifted upward, making it unnecessarily hard to reach your targets. Keeping this number updated ensures your workouts remain perfectly tailored to your current fitness level.

References

1. Relation of Resting Heart Rate to Risk for All-Cause Mortality by Gender After Considering Exercise Capacity (the Henry Ford Exercise Testing Project)
   Aladin, A. I., Whelton, S. P., Al-Mallah, M. H., et al. (2014).
   The American Journal of Cardiology, 114(11), 1701–1706
2. Athlete's heart and cardiovascular care of the athlete: scientific and clinical update
   Baggish, A. L., & Wood, M. J. (2011).
   Circulation, 123(23), 2723–2735
3. Sleep stage prediction with raw acceleration and photoplethysmography heart rate data derived from a consumer wearable device
   Walch, O., Huang, Y., Forger, D., & Goldstein, C. (2019).
   Sleep, 42(12), zsz180