Welcome to the Get Fit Guys' quick and dirty tips to slim down and shape up.

My name is Ben Greenfield, and I'm here to get you into the shape of your life.

It's pretty likely that when you climb a flight of stairs, see someone you really like,

or hear the rollicking tunes of the Get Fit Guy podcast, you experience

a rise in your heart rate. Since the heart is responsible for delivering blood to active parts

of your body, this makes sense. After all, if you ever need to break into dance, run from

a lion, or just get very psyched up to write that fourth quarter report, the active parts

of your body need oxygen and nutrients. but it can be pretty confusing to actually

know what your heart rate should be when you exercise and what heart rate will give you the

most benefit during a workout.

So in this episode, you'll learn how to measure your heart rate during a workout, how to set

heart rate zones, and how to learn how your heart rate should feel during exercise.

At the end of the episode, we'll even solve a mystery from a Get Fit guy listener about heart rate.

Of course, it would be pretty useless for you to know which heart rate zones will help you get better fitness results

if you don't know how to measure your heart rate, so that's where we'll start.

Here are three quick and dirty methods to measure your heart rate

during exercise. Number one, take your pulse. This old school method involves placing your fingers on the

carotid artery that runs down the front side of your neck or the radial artery on the inside of your

wrist and counting how many times you feel your heart beat in 6, 10, 15, 30, or 60 seconds. Frankly,

this method is inconvenient and it can be easy to miss heartbeats, but if you're technology deficient, it's one way to go. Number two, use a heart rate

monitor. A heart rate monitor has two components, a strap that goes around your chest and a monitor

that looks like a watch, which you wear on your wrist. The strap transmits your heart rate to the watch, and voila, your heart rate is displayed

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