Buy Walking VideosA Caveat on Heart Rate Monitors
Tim, at GetFitSource.com, mentioned a strange occurence he had with his heart rate monitor. He was working out at a moderate level, but his heart rate monitor was reading really high. He couldn’t understand it.
He then noticed that the woman next to him was also wearing a heart rate monitor.
“I was obviously picking up the signal from her transponder on my receiver. I switched my wrist receiver to the other side and immediately started reading a more normal 138 beats per minute for that level of exertion. I’d experienced a similar phenomenon in spinning class sometime ago but had forgotten about it.”
I’ve never had this happen to me, but I tend to go to the gym when it isn’t crowded. Our gadgets are cool and useful tools, but remember to always listen to your body. Heart rate monitors are incredibly accurate, but even they have their limitations.
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November 20th, 2005 at 4:04 pm
There are heart rate monitors with coded signals. The scenario above wouldn’t have happened if both people had them. Of course, if one had a coded transmitter and the other a non-coded, the one with the non-coded still would get interference from the coded one. Polar (www.polar.fi) makes coded heart rate monitor. I think Suunto does too, but I’m not sure.
Anyway, you still could get misreadings from running under power lines, for example, so you should be careful even with the coded heart rate monitors.