Maximum Heart Rate

I just got a Garmin Forerunner 220 with a Heart Rate Monitor and used it for the first time today. I did an ergo session and my maximum heart rate during the session was 190bpm, which Garmin Connect says was 103% of my "Max Heart Rate", which is slightly impossible.

I've looked online for formulas to try and work out a new "Max Heart Rate" to set my watch with, in order to get accurate readings, but the majority of formulas that are appararently the most accurate give me values lower than 190.

How can I work out my max heart rate? How do you do it?

I'm a 19 year old female.

Thanks

I just got a Garmin Forerunner 220 with a Heart Rate Monitor and used it for the first time today. I did an ergo session and my maximum heart rate during the session was 190bpm, which Garmin Connect says was 103% of my "Max Heart Rate", which is slightly impossible.

I've looked online for formulas to try and work out a new "Max Heart Rate" to set my watch with, in order to get accurate readings, but the majority of formulas that are appararently the most accurate give me values lower than 190.

How can I work out my max heart rate? How do you do it?

I'm a 19 year old female.

Thanks

There's various formulas but they are all inaccurate because they are based on population averages, whereas there is a lot of individual variation. The only way to find out for sure is to take a stress test, if you google you can find some you can do yourself, although best have somebody with you in case you keel over..

Why do you want to know it? I think you can be pretty confident you're in the anaerobic zone at 190.

Garmins are awesome aren't they?

The 220-age is quite a way off for most people for reasons in the previous post.

Assuming the contact between your heart rate monitor is good/tight with your skin (bonus: use conductive gel or wet it with some water), the reading should be accurate.

You say you reached 190 bpm - that's your training maximum HR. Your true maximum HR would actually be 5 bpm (or possibly more) higher than this, and would require you to push yourself to the absolute limit, get chased by a tiger, etc. So if you want to train at certain %'s of your max, I would use 195 as the max (and not 190), and work out the corresponding values, e.g. 60%, 70%, 80%, 90%.

Source: I know someone whose training max HR was 190 something bpm, but he got it tested in a lab and discovered his real max actually turned out to be 204 bpm.

Yeah I'm loving my garmin already! My 190 bpm was my peak during a training session of 3 x 12 minute pieces on an ergo, with roughly 5 minute rests in between, is this accurate for my training max heart rate or should I try more sessions? I just feel that 190 can't be my exact max training heart rate, as I could defs work harder in other sessions.

Based off of what I've read, to find your "max" HR for a given activity you have to do quite a few sensible efforts to get it up there. If you go too hard at the start then you'll prematurely fatigue and build up lactic acid. I think doing 3x12 mins with 5 min rest would get you close to your max, especially if they were hard efforts.

One thing to note though is that your ergo max HR might not be your true "biological" max HR. For example, with cycling (and apparently it's common), on the flat I can only hit about 175, even at maximum effort... whereas with running I can easily hit 190+ after some hard efforts! I'm not sure if the same applies to rowing.

EDIT:

"Many athletes do not achieve their actual HRmax at the first attempt as they are either not fit enough or are running tired.

It is worth noting you will have different maximum heart rates for different endurance sports, such as cycling. This is due to the number and size of the muscle groups used. Running uses the largest muscle groups in the body and therefore has the highest heart rates associated to it. Cyclists will need to carry out a maximum stress test for that sport to obtain their cycling maximum."