Resting Heart Rate

Your resting heart rate is the number of times your heart beats per minute when you are awake, still and calm. Most adults sit somewhere between 60 and 100 beats a minute, and trained endurance athletes are often well below 50.

A lower resting heart rate generally reflects a heart that moves more blood with each beat, which is one of the clearest adaptations to aerobic training. That is why it tends to drift down over months of consistent training, and why watching the drift is more useful than comparing yourself with anyone else.

It also rises for reasons that have nothing to do with fitness. Heat, dehydration, alcohol, a poor night's sleep, stress and the beginning of an illness all lift it, often a day before you notice anything yourself. A reading several beats above your own normal for two or three mornings running is worth paying attention to.

What it is not

It is not the lowest heart rate your watch recorded overnight, although many devices report it that way. A true resting rate is measured awake and still; the overnight minimum is usually several beats lower and will not match a reading taken sitting on the edge of the bed.

Where you see it in FitnessSyncer

Resting heart rate arrives from any connected tracker that reports it and is charted on your Dashboard and in the built-in Heart report. Your personal baselines compare each reading against your own normal, and you can set a goal against it or put it side by side with your training in Compare.