What is a good resting heart rate for my age?
You are fifty, your watch says your resting heart rate is 62, and you want to know whether that is good for your age. An honest answer starts with this: age says far less here than you think.
The numbers you are looking for
In healthy adults, the resting heart rate mostly sits somewhere between 50 and 90 beats per minute. People who do endurance sport regularly often sit lower, around 40 to 55, because a trained heart pumps more blood per beat and so needs to beat less often. Below 40 occurs in well-trained endurance athletes and is not a problem in itself, as long as you feel well.
A table by age, with a good value for 30, 40, 50 and 60, does not exist in any form that says something about you. The difference between two healthy fifty-year-olds is far bigger than the difference between an average fifty-year-old and an average thirty-year-old. Your resting heart rate does not clearly drop with the years, and it does not clearly rise either. What does change with age is your maximum heart rate, and that is a different question.
A resting heart rate of 62 at fifty is therefore simply a resting heart rate of 62. Whether that is good depends on what is normal for you.
Why your own baseline says more than a table
Your resting heart rate is most useful as a comparison with yourself. If you measure it every night, a baseline emerges after a few weeks: the range it sits in for you when everything is normal. That baseline is your reference, and a deviation from it says more than the number itself.
A morning that sits five to ten beats above your baseline usually means something is going on: a short night, alcohol, a hard session the day before, stress, or a cold on its way. One such morning is no reason to change anything. Three or four in a row are: then it is a signal to take it easier.
The other side is just as useful. If your baseline slowly drops over months, from 64 to 58, say, that is one of the clearest signs that your aerobic base is growing. You will not see that in a table or in a single measurement; you see it in your own trend.
Night or morning: how to measure
The cleanest measurement comes from your night. A watch or ring that measures your sleep gives the lowest stable heart rate of the night, and that is free of everything that interferes during the day: coffee, getting up, a conversation. Night values are therefore lower than morning values and you cannot mix the two.
If you have no night measurement, measure right after waking, before you get up and before your first coffee, and in the same way every day. Lying still for a minute and then reading the value is enough. Values measured during the day are higher and say little about your rest.
How you measure matters less than doing it the same way every time. A baseline from night measurements and a single morning measurement on the sofa are ten beats apart without anything having changed.
When to call a doctor
Trimetra is a training app, not a doctor. What is written here is general information, not medical advice, and when in doubt your GP is the right place.
Two situations do deserve an appointment. A resting heart rate above 100 that persists while you are resting, have no fever and have had no coffee. And a resting heart rate below 40 combined with symptoms: dizziness, fainting, shortness of breath, chest pain or unusual fatigue. A low value without symptoms in someone who does a lot of endurance sport is usually just a trained heart.
A sudden, lasting change in your baseline without an obvious reason is also a good moment to have it checked. Irregularities, a heartbeat that skips or races now and then, are not a matter of a number and belong with a doctor, not with an app.
What Trimetra does with this
Trimetra learns your resting heart rate baseline from your own nights, through a connected watch or a health connection on your phone. There is no table by age in the app; you are compared with yourself.
The app weighs a deviation from your baseline together with your sleep, your heart rate variability, your complaints and your training load, never as a number on its own. A persistently higher resting heart rate can then contribute to an easier day in your plan, with the reason attached, so you can see what the proposal rests on.
Without night measurements there is no baseline, and then the app says so. A resting heart rate from a profile setting on your watch is not a measurement and is not used as a baseline.
Frequently asked questions
What is a good resting heart rate for a woman of 50?
The same answer as for everyone: in healthy adults mostly between 50 and 90, lower in those who do endurance sport regularly. Age and sex barely shift that range. The comparison that counts is the one with your own baseline of the past weeks.
Is a resting heart rate of 45 too low?
In someone who does endurance sport regularly and feels well, 45 is an ordinary value: a trained heart beats less often. Below 40 combined with dizziness, fainting or shortness of breath is a reason to see a doctor. Without symptoms, a low number is not a problem in itself.
Does your resting heart rate drop as you get fitter?
Usually yes, slowly and over months. A dropping baseline under unchanged circumstances is one of the clearest signs of a growing aerobic base. From day to day it fluctuates with sleep, stress and training; so look at the trend over weeks.
Why does my watch give a different resting heart rate from my morning measurement?
Because they are different measurements. A watch usually takes the lowest stable value from your night; a morning measurement is taken awake, and that sits a few beats higher. Both are usable, as long as you do not compare them with each other.
Trimetra learns your resting heart rate from your own nights and weighs a deviation together with sleep and load, with the reason attached. You can try everything for your first month; recording and collecting stay free after that.