Heart rate recovery: what a good number is and why it matters

Heart rate recovery is how many beats per minute your heart rate falls in the first minute after you stop hard exercise. A fast drop means the nerves that calm your heart switch on quickly. A slow drop has been linked to a higher risk of heart disease and death.

Apple Watch calls it Cardio Recovery and measures it after workouts.

What's a good heart rate recovery?

In the study that put it on the map, a drop of 12 beats or fewer in the first minute counted as abnormal. That cutoff came from a treadmill test followed by slow walking, so it's a rough guide for a reading taken any other way. Higher is better, and the number is most useful compared with your own past readings after similar workouts.

Check yours against the research cutoffs with the heart rate recovery calculator.

Why it predicts heart health

The 1999 study followed 2,428 adults referred for an exercise test at the Cleveland Clinic for six years. A quarter had abnormal recovery, 12 beats or fewer. Their risk of death was four times higher at first glance, and still twice as high after allowing for age, fitness, medications, heart scan results and other risk factors.

A 2017 meta-analysis of nine studies with 41,600 people found slow recovery was linked to a 68% higher risk of death from any cause and a 69% higher risk of cardiovascular events. Every 10 beats per minute slower recovery added about 9% to the risk of death.

The people in the 1999 study were sent for testing by their doctors, so they weren't a random sample. Both are observational studies.

How to measure it

Measure it the same way each time, because the number depends heavily on how hard you worked and what you did straight after.

Finish a hard effort, such as the last minute of a run or a steep hill. Note your heart rate the moment you stop, then again one minute later. Walk slowly for that minute, as the research did, and do it the same way every time. The difference is your recovery.

Apple Watch records Cardio Recovery automatically after workouts that raise your heart rate enough, and saves it to Apple Health. Its number is only comparable between workouts of similar intensity.

How to improve heart rate recovery

Get fitter. Recovery is faster in people with more aerobic fitness, and endurance training is the most reliable way to build it. A meta-analysis of 191 studies found endurance training lowered resting heart rate in both men and women, a sign of the same calming nerve activity.

Build a steady base. Two or three zone 2 sessions a week, plus one harder session once that feels easy, is a good plan. See VO2 max and longevity.

Sleep, alcohol and stress matter too. They change recovery from one day to the next, so compare readings over weeks.

If your recovery is slow and you get chest pain, unusual breathlessness or dizziness during exercise, see a doctor.

How Ageon uses heart rate recovery

Cardio recovery is one of the inputs to Ageon's cardio domain, next to VO2 max, resting heart rate, heart rate variability and blood pressure. Ageon reads it from Apple Health when your watch records it and uses your typical value, not a single workout.