Your heart may be the strongest indicator of how fit you truly are — more than your running speed or lifting capacity. Fitness coach Raj Ganpath, founder of the Slow Burn Method and co-founder of Quad Fitness, has highlighted four essential heart metrics that everyone should monitor to assess long-term health and fitness.
In a video posted on November 19, Ganpath explained that these simple yet powerful indicators can reveal the current state of your cardiovascular system and help you track progress over time. According to him, the first metric to understand is your Maximum Heart Rate (MHR), which defines how hard your heart can safely work during exercise. This number helps determine the ideal intensity zones for training.
The second metric, Resting Heart Rate (RHR), reflects how efficiently your heart functions when your body is at complete rest. A lower RHR usually signals better cardiovascular fitness, while a higher one may indicate stress, fatigue, or underlying issues. Ganpath notes that a healthy resting range typically falls between 55 and 80 beats per minute for most adults.
Another important parameter is Heart Rate Recovery (HRR) — the speed at which your heart rate drops after finishing an intense activity. Faster recovery suggests stronger cardiac conditioning. Ganpath recommends tracking how much your heart rate decreases within one minute after exertion.
Finally, he emphasised the role of Heart Rate Variability (HRV), a measure of the time variation between heartbeats. A higher HRV is associated with better recovery, lower stress, and overall resilience. Since HRV cannot be checked manually, fitness wearables and smartwatches are the easiest tools to monitor it accurately.
Ganpath advises people to focus less on comparing numbers with others and more on tracking their own steady improvements. Monitoring these four metrics consistently, he says, can offer a clearer, more reliable picture of your heart health and overall fitness journey.
