Having a low resting heart rate is an indicator for cardiovascular health and fitness. It suggests the heart is strong and can pump a lot of blood with every beat, thus it does not have to beat as frequently. Your physical fitness is directly correlated to the strength of your heart.
I figured it would be a good challenge to see if, notwithstanding my tendency to live life at a fast pace, I could achieve a low resting heart rate in the forties, at the age of 40.
My heart rate is not naturally particularly low and so reducing it to within the forties presented a significant challenge. I’ve been experimenting on myself over the past few months to see what affects my heart rate and how it can become lower.
The three factors that seemed to help me personally achieve a low heart rate were as follows:
- 1. High level of fitness
- 2. Good diet
- 3. Sufficient rest
If any one of these are not present, my resting heart rate would be relatively higher.
The three main factors that seemed to drive my resting heart rate up were as follows:
- 1. Drinking alcohol
- 2. Overtraining and doing late night workouts
- 3. Stress
Below are some pictures that illustrate the dramatic effect consuming alcohol had on my resting heart rate. You can effectively see which night I drank alcohol, as my resting heart rose significantly.
Needless to say, to complete this challenge I had to consider not drinking any alcohol at all or (living in a dry country helped).
When I am calm, well-rested and relatively still my heart rate now drops into the 40s fairly regularly but this is only momentary and not my actual resting heart rate as you can see in the below screenshot from the Garmin Connect App.
43 BPM is the lowest I’ve recorded my current heart rate at. 03/05/2021
I did managed to achieve a daily resting heart rate in the forties a number of times over a four month period so this shows it is not a one off freak occurrence.
The below screenshots cover the period from early May to mid-August 2021:
The lowest daily resting heart rate I achieved was 44 beats per minute on 4th July 2021.
To take this challenge one step further, I am trying to achieve a 7-day average resting heart rate in the forties.
I’ve had my 7 day average resting heart rate it as low as 51 (see below) but invariably something gets in the way like a late night or a hard training session and as these things raise the hard rate significantly even one night increases the average and thus prevents me from being able to lower if further.
I think I will be able to achieve a 7 day average resting heart rate when I have completed the Ironman and the marathon and the temperature reduces in Riyadh so I can adjust my training schedule to better achieve it.
I’d also like to see if I can record a heart rate of 40 beats per minute but I reckon it might take some sort of meditative trance to achieve that (and then how will I screenshot the app….?!).
Incredibly on the 2nd of February 2022, exactly one month after I consumed the last alcohol at Heathrow Airpirt before I flew back to the middle east and began ‘Dry January’ I managed to achieve a resting heart rate of 40 beats per minute as per the below screenshot from the Garmin connect app (no meditative trance required):
I am still aiming for a weekly average heart rate in the forties and currently my average is 51 beats per minute so guess if I keep on doing what in doing it may well get there!
…and then on the 5th of February 2022, after a week of low resting heart rate and no drinking alcohol, I finally achieved my additional goal of a ‘Resting Heart Rate in the 40s’ over a 7-day average.
The 7 day average for my resting heart rate continued to drop while I was on leave from work to as low as 47 but it subsequently returned to the low 50s after my return to work and associated travel.
The watch I used was a Garmin 245, like the one on this link: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07RCJV4PT/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=cjburgoine-21&camp=1634&creative=6738&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=B07RCJV4PT&linkId=b5e43d6842b72d7a6282b5e376f02801
