Best way to lower resting heart rate?

Try this wrote:

Go to a quite place like the beach. Get your towel out and lay on it. Then close your eyes and listen to the waves hitting the surface of the sand many times over to the point it becomes rtyhmic in your mind. You will start to feel very relaxed, breathing becomes shallow and if you listen carefully you will feel your heart rate slowly beat one second at a time. As your mind relax and go to a state of dream, you will notice that you have lowered your heart rate.😊

Tried this, RHR is now 60 BPM. Thanks for nothing!

Fit as a Fiddle wrote:

HIIT/speedwork? Mileage? Cross-training? I'm at around 60-65, but would like it to be lower for both general health/fitness and running reasons.

Just wait a few years, it will get lower.

Old Man Winter1 wrote:

Try this wrote:

Go to a quite place like the beach. Get your towel out and lay on it. Then close your eyes and listen to the waves hitting the surface of the sand many times over to the point it becomes rtyhmic in your mind. You will start to feel very relaxed, breathing becomes shallow and if you listen carefully you will feel your heart rate slowly beat one second at a time. As your mind relax and go to a state of dream, you will notice that you have lowered your heart rate.😊

Tried this, RHR is now 60 BPM. Thanks for nothing!

Why would you want to lower it? We are more concerned about a persons blood pressure than resting heart rate.

a low resting heart rate is an indicator - not the goal - of a healthy and well-trained individual.

do all the right stuff, eat and drink all the right stuff (and avoid the wrong stuff) and you will have a lower resting heart rate.

One of the best masters road racers I know siad that both his health and his race times improved dramatically when he did 2 things: retired and divorced. Eliminating stress makes a HUGE difference in your health.

12456 wrote:

12236 wrote:

This is false. I am sipping my caffeinated bevvy now and have a resting HR of 47

That's not a very low resting HR for a trained endurance athlete.

That's not my RHR that's my current HR. My RHR is 37.

Jerk it twice a day.

12236 wrote:

This is false. I am sipping my caffeinated bevvy now and have a resting HR of 47

12236 wrote:

That's not my RHR that's my current HR. My RHR is 37.

Brilliant response.

Slowdown or stop breathing

Fit as a Fiddle wrote:

HIIT/speedwork? Mileage? Cross-training? I'm at around 60-65, but would like it to be lower for both general health/fitness and running reasons.

Propranolol.......or a derivative in the same class.

Some people just have naturally high revving hearts, some slow. My dad did no aerobic training and his RHR was around 47.

You need to watch a few things:

- what is your baseline RHR when untrained?

- aerobic training will lower your RHR, to a point. Even nothing but slow running will help, though more mileage/intervals is best.

- Or RHR won't change because you are one of these rare "non responder" types

- take your RHR at the same time every day, sitting in the same position, after voiding bladder/bowels if possible. Preferably at bedtime or upon waking.

- once you've established your RHR, watch out for sudden rises of 5-10 beats in morning, this can be a sign you are overtrained or sick.

Tomato Tomato wrote:

Jerk it twice a day.

Easily, the best answer.

Eat lots of garlic and I know your blood pressure will drop almost instantly

About every doctor who has ever studied an elite athlete will disagree with you bud.

Literally one thing all elites (in Distance running) have in common is an extremely low heart rate, all of the top 10 in the 2012 olympics had resting HR's in the mid to low 30's man, you can't sit there and say that their is no correlation.

BiTractifan wrote:, you can't sit there and say that their is no correlation.

The correlation is in adaptations made by the heart to endurance training. The heart grows larger, the chamber walls get thicker, chambers more fully expand on each beat, chambers more fully empty on each beat, and the chamber contractions are more forceful.

All of which means stroke volume is increased, so the heart doesn't have to pump as frequently to supply the body with its nutrients.

Certain aspects of training will emphasis different elements of those adaptations, but I'd have to look it up to say which types of efforts give which adaptations.

Just like anything else your genetic makeup determines how significantly your heart rate will change (as well as its untrained rhr), but endurance training will illicit those results for essentially everyone.

As others have pointed out, low resting HR is a byproduct, not a goal.

michael t smith wrote:

As others have pointed out, low resting HR is a byproduct, not a goal.

True, but don't you think if you made it a goal that it would end up a byproduct?

Old Man Winter1 wrote:

Try this wrote:

Go to a quite place like the beach. Get your towel out and lay on it. Then close your eyes and listen to the waves hitting the surface of the sand many times over to the point it becomes rtyhmic in your mind. You will start to feel very relaxed, breathing becomes shallow and if you listen carefully you will feel your heart rate slowly beat one second at a time. As your mind relax and go to a state of dream, you will notice that you have lowered your heart rate.😊

Tried this, RHR is now 60 BPM. Thanks for nothing!

Is that because while you were relaxing your mind, it wondered off to a beautiful woman on a beach?...😉

Some advice wrote:

BiTractifan wrote:, you can't sit there and say that their is no correlation.

The correlation is in adaptations made by the heart to endurance training. The heart grows larger, the chamber walls get thicker, chambers more fully expand on each beat, chambers more fully empty on each beat, and the chamber contractions are more forceful.

All of which means stroke volume is increased, so the heart doesn't have to pump as frequently to supply the body with its nutrients.

Certain aspects of training will emphasis different elements of those adaptations, but I'd have to look it up to say which types of efforts give which adaptations.

Just like anything else your genetic makeup determines how significantly your heart rate will change (as well as its untrained rhr), but endurance training will illicit those results for essentially everyone.

Is this why Jim Ryun could have done a 1:39 and a 3:24 but not win an Olympic Gold?

I don't know what your lifestyle is like, but here are 2 things I noticed to be consistently true for me:

(1.) When I drink alcohol, my heartrate is higher. When I've had around 5 drinks or more, it takes about 24 hours for my heartrate to return to normal.

(2.) When I'm lacking sleep, my heartrate is higher.