How important is a Heart Rate Monitor when cycling for weight loss?
I have an old Everlast HRM watch, but it cannot display the average HR after a workout. I am using RunKeeper to track my rides and I have noticed that it has a field for average HR.
Thanks
The short annswer is not at all important. People trained and got fit for decades without heart rate monitors. Current thoughs in some camps is to dump heart rate altogether. For someone just wanting to get fit and loose some weight, heartrate monitoring is usually an interesting distraction. The drive for it comes down from pro level sports to trainers and manufacturers selling 'extras'.
Unless you know you maximum heart rate (The 220-age formula is wrong as often as its right - do not use it), a monitor gives little useful information, and is more likely to put you wrong. You also need your aerobic threshold for it to anything more than marginally useful. Its very hard to establish aerobic threshold without knowing average heart rate, but you also need to know a lot more than just average.....
You should use the watch during training to ensure you are in your target bands- just look at the watch occationally. The proviso is that you can accurately establish the correct heart rate bands. If you have a trainier, averages, time in band etc might help them tune your training program, but if you had a trainer, they would tell you if this is needed.
Are you at risk of a heart attack? If so it is probably useful. Seriously, I have a (mid-fifties) friend whose doctor advised him that everybody "over a certain age" should wear a HRM when they exercise.
Also, there is a regime of training that is heart-rate-based. Clearly if you subscribe to this, then you will need a heart rate monitor to see how you're doing. But there are also regimes which emphasise cadence, or power, or probably other parameters too. So heart rate is not the only metric by which to judge "progress".
But since you say you're cycling for weight loss, would it be fair to say that none of these specific metrics interests you (yet)? In which case, I wouldn't get too stressed about not having a HRM. If what you want is weight loss, getting on the bike in the first place will start to achieve that.
One thing I would say - and I am someone who started cycling to achieve weight loss, and who has worn a HRM since the start - is that by measuring things like heart rate data over time, you get to know how your body is working, what its limitations are, how your fitness is improving etc., which can be useful. But is it useful enough to go buy an HRM? Well, that's really your call. (After all, if all you're interested in is weight loss, then a set of scales will suffice!)
Lastly I'd echo what @Batman says - if you think there's any cardio risk with you jumping on a bike in the first place, you should really consult your doctor before doing so.
If you use a bluetooth or ANT+ heartrate monitor, you can plug that data right into your app. You'll have to explore their website to figure out which one is compatible with your cellphone and app version.
I use Abvio's Cyclemeter along with a Polaris bluetooth HRM and Wahoo cadence+speed sensor. I find that it's usually a big pain to use the HRM and just go with the cadence + speed, which is more important for me. Part of what you want to do is to increase your distance and effort over time.
You can also look into power meters that hook into your rear hub but they are considerably more expensive.
