Sometime around 2006, I was having lunch outside with friends in the quad of Google’s main campus. One of those friends, an avid cyclist, mentioned he’d been tracking his resting heart rate. I didn’t know anyone else who was paying attention to this at the time. I listened with interest, but didn’t think much more about it.

What’s most interesting to me about this story is that I have any memory of the conversation, considering the thousands-upon-thousands of conversations I’ve had in the last 52 years. Something about this piqued my interest…maybe the fact it was novel.

Fast forward to switching from Fitbit to Whoop and I’ve become fascinated with resting heart rate — what is it? where does it fall within the range? what impacts it?

What does this mean for you?

Your resting heart rate, when considered in the context of other markers, such as blood pressure and cholesterol, can help identify potential health problems as well as gauge your current heart health.

[source]

According to Harvard Health, resting heart rate (RHR) is “one of the easiest, and maybe most effective, ways to gauge your health and can be done in 30 seconds with two fingers.”

A 2013 study found that a high resting heart rate was linked with lower physical fitness and higher blood pressure, body weight, and levels of circulating blood fats. The researchers also discovered that the higher a person's resting heart rate, the greater the risk of premature death.

[source]

If you have a fitness tracker like Whoop that measures resting heart rate with a high level of accuracy, you don’t even need two fingers, and you can re-purpose the 30 seconds into reviewing your RHR data daily in an app on your phone. Another bonus, the app stores your historical RHR data. You can look at trends over time.

According to Whoop, a study found that WHOOP 3.0 was the most accurate of the wearables evaluated in measuring HR compared to the gold-standard ECG-derived heart rate.

This post is not an ad for Whoop, though it may sound like one.

How this is playing out in real life

I got my Whoop in November of 2023. Along with strain and restorative sleep, resting heart rate (RHR) became the third metric I’m most interested in.

I’d like to be in “Athlete” range for my age and gender. Because, why not? 😎 Maybe it’s redemption for not being…well, athletic. 🙃

Average monthly RHR between 55 and 57 is one of my health goals.

Whoop resting heart rate by age and gender

Where I started

Where I’ve been the last 6 months

What spikes my RHR?

Alcohol
Restaurant dinners, takeout
Late dinners, even home-cooked
Any dessert that’s not whole fruit, anything chocolate, after dinner
A cold or flu virus

While all of these can impact my RHR, those causing the highest spikes are a virus, followed by a restaurant/takeout dinner with alcohol.

If you’re tracking your RHR and not experiencing similar effects, let me know!

What lowers RHR?

Reducing or eliminating all of the RHR spiking activities above
Adding more exercise

Getting started

If you’re new to tracking health data, avoid overwhelm.

Pick one (new) metric you’d like to focus on.

Example: if you’ve been tracking steps, try adding a second measurement that piques your interest. It could be deep sleep & REM, resting heart rate, etc.

Whoop affiliate link

Thanks for reading!

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Cover photo by @joshua_chehov on Unsplash

Resting heart rate and why it’s on my goals list