Estimate your maximum heart rate and five training zones in beats per minute, with the formula shown.
Heart rate zones are ranges of beats per minute, found by taking a percentage of your maximum heart rate, and the maximum is usually estimated from your age. This page offers two published formulas. The Fox rule is 220 − age. The Tanaka formula, 208 − 0.7 × age, comes from a 2001 study by Tanaka, Monahan and Seals in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, which pooled 351 studies and then tested 514 healthy adults. For a 50-year-old, Tanaka gives 173 bpm and Fox gives 170 bpm. The two agree near age 40 and drift apart for older and younger people. If you have a maximum you measured yourself in a hard, safe test, choose that option and it replaces both formulas. The default example is age 50 with the Tanaka formula, and when you pick an age-based formula the page shows both formula results side by side so you can see what the choice changes.
A zone can be a plain percent of your maximum, or a percent of your heart-rate reserve, the gap between your resting and maximum heart rate. The reserve method is named after Karvonen: target = resting + (maximum − resting) × intensity. With a maximum of 173 and a resting rate of 60, 70% of max is 121 bpm, but 70% of reserve is 60 + 113 × 0.7 = 139 bpm. Reserve zones sit higher for a fit person with a low resting rate, so the two methods give different numbers for the same person. Use the resting field only when you want the Karvonen version. Take the resting rate by counting your pulse for 60 seconds right after waking.
The American Heart Association describes moderate intensity as 50% to 70% of maximum heart rate and vigorous intensity as 70% to 85%. Those two ranges are always worked out from maximum heart rate, even when the zone table uses heart-rate reserve, and are labelled that way. The five-zone table splits 50% to 100% into bands of 10 points: very light, light, moderate, hard and maximum effort. Five equal bands are a common training convention, not an official standard, and other coaches and watch makers draw the lines differently. Each zone starts at its rounded lower boundary and ends one beat below the next zone, so a beat is never in two zones. At age 50 with Tanaka, zone 2 is 104 to 120 bpm.
Formulas predict an average. Real maximum heart rates for people of the same age vary by roughly 10 beats a minute either way, and the 220 − age rule is known to be rough for individuals. Heart rate also moves with heat, sleep, caffeine, hills and illness. Medicines such as beta blockers lower the heart rate, so a formula can send you too high. This page gives general estimates for healthy adults. It is not medical advice and it does not prescribe training. If you have a heart condition, take heart or blood-pressure medicine, or feel chest pain or dizziness when you exercise, ask your doctor which heart rates are right for you. The ages and rates you type stay in your browser.
Use 208 − 0.7 × age (Tanaka, 2001) or 220 − age (Fox). For a 40-year-old, Tanaka gives 180 bpm and Fox gives 180 bpm. At 60, Tanaka gives 166 and Fox gives 160. Both are estimates, not a measured maximum.
Only roughly. It is a rule of thumb from 1971, and individual maximums differ from it by about 10 bpm or more in either direction. Tanaka and colleagues found 208 − 0.7 × age fit healthy adults better, especially past age 40. A measured maximum is better than either.
Target heart rate = resting rate + (maximum − resting) × intensity. With a resting rate of 60, a maximum of 173 and an intensity of 70%, the target is 60 + 113 × 0.7 = 139 bpm. It uses your resting rate, so two people of the same age get different zones.
On this page zone 2 is 60% to 70% of the chosen base. For a 50-year-old on Tanaka (max 173) that is 104 to 120 bpm by percent of max. Some coaches define zone 2 differently, so check which definition your plan uses.
It gives 50% to 70% of maximum heart rate for moderate activity and 70% to 85% for vigorous activity. At a max of 173 bpm those are 87 to 121 bpm and 121 to 147 bpm. Both ranges are shown as results above the table.
Do not rely on it. Beta blockers and some other drugs lower the heart rate, so a formula built on age can put you above a safe level. Ask your doctor for a heart-rate range that fits your medicine and your condition. Nothing you type here is uploaded or stored.