The Polar tagline asks: Is Your Workout Working? POLAR LISTEN TO YOUR BODY …
There are many ways to ‘listen’ to your body to adjust to the right intensity when you are working out. An experienced athlete learns to monitor joints, muscle exertional pain, breathing, how the heart feels and other physical factors. A heart rate monitor from Polar can help workout intensity become more precise.
Quoting from a Polar brochure:
Let’s add a little detail to that first sentence. Exercising with your heart rate ‘too high’ probably still reaps benefits, but in a protracted time period, you risk overtraining and possible injury and staleness. Short bursts of high heart rates, especially if your sport demands it, can be necessary from time to time. The important point is to track your heart rate with how you feel and how you expect to feel. When you compare your heart rate numbers to what you were doing in real time, you’ll start to see a pattern (especially endurance athletes). You’ll get to know yourself better. You’ll understand how your human machine works with greater clarity. You’ll learn if those prolonged high heart rates above target really do slow down your times as you get stale. Then, you’ll learn how to obtain optimal performance and how to adjust the intensities of your workouts so that you peak on the days of competition.