How to Estimate Your Maximum Heart Rate and Training Zones

Your maximum heart rate is the highest your heart will beat during an all-out effort. Training zones, such as “moderate” or “vigorous”, are usually set as percentages of it. The trouble is that most people only estimate it from their age, and for any one person that estimate can easily be 10 to 20 beats per minute (bpm) off.

This article is general information, not medical advice. If you have a heart condition or symptoms with exercise, talk to a doctor before testing your maximum.

The Formulas

• 220 − age. The best-known formula. Tanaka’s study found it underestimates maximum heart rate in older adults.
• 208 − 0.7 × age (Tanaka). In 2001, Tanaka, Monahan, and Seals pooled 351 studies with 18,712 people and confirmed the result in a laboratory study of 514 healthy adults. The equation was the same for men and women and for active and inactive people.

At 30, both give about 190 bpm. At 60, 220 − age gives 160 and Tanaka’s 166. Both describe the average for an age; individuals of the same age vary widely around it, which is why a measured maximum is better when it’s safe to find.

From a Maximum to Zones

The American College of Sports Medicine’s (ACSM) position stand on exercise sets intensity as a share of maximum heart rate:

Intensity	Share of maximum heart rate
Moderate	64% to 76%
Vigorous	77% to 95%

The American Heart Association gives a simpler version: about 50% to 70% of maximum for moderate activity and 70% to 85% for vigorous.

A second approach, heart rate reserve (the Karvonen method), uses your resting heart rate too: reserve = maximum − resting, and a target is resting + a share of the reserve. ACSM gives 40% to 59% of reserve as moderate and 60% to 89% as vigorous. Because it accounts for a low resting heart rate, it often suits fitter people better.

Watches and apps often use five zones of their own. Their names and boundaries differ by brand, so a “zone 2” on one isn’t the same as on another.

Finding Your Own Maximum

• A supervised exercise test measures it directly, and is the safest way, especially if you’re older or have risk factors.
• A hard field effort, for healthy, trained people: after a thorough warm-up, a few minutes of increasingly hard running, cycling, or rowing, ending in an all-out final minute. The highest value a chest strap records is close to your maximum.
• Your own history. The highest heart rate you’ve reached in hard races or intervals over the past months is a floor for your maximum.

Heart rate also drifts upward in heat, with dehydration, and late in long sessions, so zones are a guide rather than a rule. How hard an effort feels is a useful check beside the number.

Following It in Kaizora

Heart Rate is on the Vitals page, from your watch’s minute-level stream in Apple Health, a chest strap, or readings you log. Its chart shows the maximum, minimum, and average of each bucket, so your highest values in a year of hard sessions are easy to find.

The Short Version

• 208 − 0.7 × age estimates maximum heart rate better than 220 − age, but only on average.
• Moderate exercise is about 64% to 76% of maximum and vigorous 77% to 95%, by ACSM’s position stand.
• Heart rate reserve accounts for your resting rate.
• A measured maximum beats any formula.

Sources

• Tanaka H, Monahan KD, Seals DR, “Age-predicted maximal heart rate revisited,” Journal of the American College of Cardiology 37, no. 1 (2001): 153–156. doi:10.1016/S0735-1097(00)01054-8
• Garber CE et al., “Quantity and quality of exercise for developing and maintaining cardiorespiratory, musculoskeletal, and neuromotor fitness in apparently healthy adults: guidance for prescribing exercise,” Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise 43, no. 7 (2011): 1334–1359. doi:10.1249/MSS.0b013e318213fefb
• American Heart Association, Target Heart Rates Chart.