Just curious. If you (assuming ‘you’ are in average shape) do some aerobic exercise (let’s say you run for half an hour on a treadmill) fast enough to get your heart well into the ‘cardio training zone’ (which is, I think, about 80% of your maximum heart rate), how long, approximately, should it take for your heart to return to its normal resting rate? Assume that you’re just doing straight jogging and you don’t vary your pace throughout.
Cheers,
P.S. - This is not a homework question 
This would be extremely variable but I’d say 5-10 minutes seems about right to me. In part it would depend on your physiology, of course, and how long you take to fully restore your post-exercise oxygen consumption back to normal.
One way to define “normal” would be to look an individual who is “normal” based on them not being likely to die from a heart problem, right? So if you use that criterion, you can find studies like this one, where post-exercise heart rates were formally measured after a stress test that raised heart rates to 80% of a putative max (maximum in this case being 220 minus age; still a WAG, but a common formula).
A couple more studies, here and here; these studies are focusing on the first minute or two in an effort to show that a more rapid recovery is a reasonable indicator of a more healthy heart (more specifically; is associated with a lowered mortality). Duh.
Anyway, the broad range for the first minute might be something like 20-40 beats lower in a healthy person, and it sort of asymptotically tails off to baseline from there. However a complete elimination of Excess Post-exercise Oxygen Consumption might take hours, so some residual mild tachycardia might go on for some time, even in a normal person. See here.
Mine drops to normal within 5 minutes.
I think you’ll get close to normal resting HR, but I have read that it will be a few beats higher then normal for a couple of hours.
Mine drops to close to resting (within a few beats) after about 4 or 5 minutes.
It depends on cardiovascular fitness. I’d say it should drop to normal within 5-10 minutes. As a point of comparison though:
A year ago, I’d do a sprint and be out of breath for a few minutes (say, 5 or 6). Now (I’ve been running regularly since then) it takes me a minute or two to recover.
The quickness of return to normal heart pacing is an extremely important test in heart condition. My heart rate returns to about 50 or less in under two minutes. I feel blessed and have good heart genes I believe. If it takes 5-10 minutes or more, this can be a sign of an atypical rhythm having to do with lower heart circulation.
If you are seriously concerned I suggest a stress test. It could cost $300 or so and you would only do it one time unless something is revealed. Sometimes insurance covers it and you may have a personal physician that could assist in qualifying you for an insurance covered test.
Many athletes take stress tests because they simply desire to know where they stand relative to others without any thought as to any disease process.
I have to disagree. I can go on a treadmill and get my HR up over 180, although I am 73 years young. (So much for MHR being 220-age.) After finishing my run, I will do a 5-minute cool down on the tm, which is computed for the cool down. I check my HR every minute during the cool down. After the first minute, there is a dramatic drop, and each minute thereafter there are substantial drops. However, between the 4th and 5th minute, the drop is less. My HR after the cool down is around 100. My RHR is around 50. So, as an experiment of one, if you are fit (and I call myself fit, having run a 50-miler and 33 marathons, along with triathlons and biathlons), your HR will drop quickly after the heavy exertion, but will not return to normal for quite some time. However, I did not come to a complete rest, but the cool down was a slow decrease in my pace, with the last minute or two being a walking pace of 15-minute miles.
Holy crap. That’s amazing.
Basically, what I’ve read is the you want a drop of at least 30 bpm in the first minute after exercise, preferably closer to 50 bpm. However, to get back to a true resting rate, it may take as long as a half hour or so. I drop from 160 to 90 in about two or three minutes. However, to get back down to a resting rate in the 50s, it may take me a good 20-30 minutes. I drop rapidly in the first five minutes, and then plateau in the 80s or low 90s. Here’s one study that says anything 12 bpm or less in the first minute is a bad sign.
Cheers for all the info guys. The reason I asked the question was that I was at the gym the other day and I ran for 30 minutes on the treadmill, during which time my heart rate went up to about 160. I did a 5 minute cool down walk and my heart rate went down to about 130. However, it took nearly an hour before my heart rate was down to below 100. I managed the run perfectly well, no pain or discomfort or anything (then again, I was only running at about a 12 minute mile pace), but I was just a bit curious about my heart recovery rate. I’m not in great shape but I wouldn’t say I feel particularly out of shape either.
back when I was in serious training and used to track this stuff, my feeling was you want to check your rate as soon as you wake up - maybe a little less than that is your resting rate. If after training the next morning you are not back there, then you have something to wonder about. But right before you step on the treadmill or whatever, that is not likely to be your actual resting rate, whether you drop to it quickly or not.
Another article to add to the mix provided by CP.
What that article basically found was that fitness as measured by peak oxygen consumption (think how intense you can go) correlated with baseline heart rate variability but not with heart rate recovery rate, and fitness as measured by training volume (which they did not refer to as a sort of fitness actually and correlates with endurance I would think) was correlated with heart rate recovery rate and not heart rate variability at rest. So people getting fit with H.I.I.T. only may have superior oxygen consumption rates and superior heart rate variability rates but not do as well on heart rate recovery rates as do those with greater training volumes.
Also from their heart rate recovery index models the recovery rate as a first order exponential decay curve -
Congrats. You describe a very healthy regime and heart function. I have a very slow heartbeat by nature (bradycardia). I have measured as low as 32 bpm at UofM Hospital before bladder surgery one time. Measurements under 38 are extremely common for me. The reduction after running is on a curve similar to yours, but it gets under 50 well within five minutes. Likewise, I only have this one model year to go by.