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" I love going to the gym, but sometimes I can&amp;#039;t tell if I&amp;#039;m getting a good workout. I used to judge by how much I&amp;#039;d sweat, but that just isn&amp;#039;t enough evidence for me anymore. So when my friend was telling me how much she loved using a heart rate monitor, I was intrigued and intimidated at the same time. Wearing a monitor can help you pace yourself so you exercise safely, track your progress, and tell you how many calories you&amp;#039;ve burned. So you can get fit doing just about anything, from playing with your dog to swimming and from cleaning your car to dancing. But above all else, it motivates you since you can see how hard you&amp;#039;re working out. It&amp;#039;s kind of like having your own personal trainer telling you to slow down or speed up.  There are two types of heart rate monitors. One has a soft chest strap that holds a small transmitter that sends signals of your heart wirelessly to a watch you wear on your wrist. You can constantly monitor your heart rate with this kind of monitor. Another type uses sensors instead of the chest strap, so you wear the watch on your wrist and place your index and middle fingers on the sensors on the front of the watch to display your heart rate. With this kind, you have to actively take your heart rate each time.  There are various tests you can do to calculate your target heart rate. The easiest is to take the number 220 and subtract your age. The result is your &amp;quot;maximum&amp;quot; heart rate (the maximum number of contractions your heart can make per minute). You don&amp;#039;t necessarily want to reach that number when you work out \u2014 you just want to work anywhere from 50 to 85 percent of your max. And just so you know, according to the American Heart Association, the average 20-year-old person would have an average maximum heart rate of 200 beats per minute (so the target heart rate zone would be anywhere from 100 to 170 beats per minute).  I decided to test out some heart rate monitors to see what it&amp;#039;s all about. Since I was trying to do a true &amp;quot;experiment,&amp;quot; I tested them all doing the same two exercises, spinning and running (okay, more like jogging) on the treadmill.   Click here for a review of the monitors I tried, plus where to get them and how much they cost! "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.seventeen.com/health/fitness/advice/a11217/heart-rate-monitor-how-to/>