The Importance of Target Heart Rates

Video Transcript

"Hi my name is Eric Frischhertz and I'm a cardiologist in Austin, Texas with Capital Cardiovascular Specialists and I'm here to answer the question of what is the importance of target heart rates. For people who don't have heart disease and are otherwise healthy target heart rates are not so important and I recommend that you perform your exercise based on perceived exertion rather than on target heart rates unless you are a specialized athlete which should have specialized trainers to help you determine how you should be exercising. For people with heart disease the importance of target rates is much increased because particularly after heart attacks or after heart surgery we don't want the patients to be exercising too aggressively especially early on and specialized programs called cardiovascular rehabilitation are very useful in determining what heart rate you should be exercising at depending on how far out you are from the event such as a heart attack or from surgery."