Resting heart rate (RHR) is how many times your heart beats per minute while you're fully at rest. It's one of the cheapest meaningful health signals available: it responds to training, stress, sleep, illness, and recovery — and you can measure it every morning for free.
What's normal?
- Most healthy adults: 60–100 beats per minute.
- Regular exercisers commonly sit around 50–70 bpm.
- Well-trained endurance athletes can run 40–55 bpm — a stronger heart moves more blood per beat, so it needs fewer beats.
- Persistently above ~100 bpm at rest (tachycardia), or low rates with dizziness or fatigue, are worth discussing with a doctor.
How to measure it correctly
The gold-standard moment is within the first couple of minutes after waking, before coffee, scrolling, or standing up. Manually: press two fingers on your wrist's thumb side, count beats for 30 seconds, double it. A wearable does this automatically overnight; no wearable needed, though — apps like Pulser measure heart rate using your iPhone's camera and LED, or pair with a Bluetooth chest strap.
The trend beats any single number
A single reading is a snapshot; the weekly trend is the story. A resting heart rate drifting down over months usually reflects improving cardiovascular fitness — it's one of the most satisfying signals that your push-ups, squats, and walks are working. A sudden rise of 5–10 bpm above your baseline for several days often flags incomplete recovery, stress, poor sleep, or an oncoming illness: a good day to train light.
Turn your resting HR into training zones
Your resting heart rate isn't just a health marker — it's an input. The Karvonen method computes training zones from heart rate reserve (max HR minus resting HR), so as your resting number drops with fitness, your zones personalize automatically. Plug your age and this morning's resting HR into our free heart rate zone calculator to see all five zones, including the Zone 2 range most of your cardio should live in.
Log it alongside your training
Pulser is built for exactly this daily habit: measure with the iPhone camera or a Bluetooth belt, log blood pressure manually, and watch your trends over weeks. Pair the cardio signal with your training logs — there's a reason the CounterUps achievements page tracks resting heart rate as one of its three long-term health metrics. (Heart-rate apps are wellness tools, not medical devices — see a professional for anything concerning.)