We all have one. Its a bundle of cardiac muscle tissue nestled deep beneath and within the protection of our ribs and our lungs. Weighing in at just under a pound, rounding out to the size of your fist, and pumping up a whopping 2 tablespoons of blood every single beat!
Your heart tells you so many things that are important to your health. It beats faster when you are excited or working hard, it is slow and peaceful when you remain at rest and calm, it occasionally will speed up when someone you admire walks in the room (cheeks blush here), or feels like it stops when something devastating occurs. It feels heavy on gloomy days and broken after you've lost a love. It beats steadfast and diligently without question through any situation or circumstance and it never gives up.
Today I gained a deeper appreciation for my heart. Being a relatively high stress person, with a higher scale of anxiety and worries...my heart rarely gets a break from the chaos of my inability to calm myself down.
In class we were attached to heart monitors for the duration of our lab. The intention of the experiment was to teach us (the physical educators) how to use the TriFit Polar Heart Monitors in our future secondary physical education classes.
Our goal was to exercise within the "Target Zone" of 135-180 bpm for 20 whole minutes. We strapped the transmitter around our upper ribcage and buckled on the handy dandy watch, pushed some important red and blue buttons and began our workout.
Within about 2 minutes I was up to a steady 155 bpm and running laps around the gym. Going strong I was maintaining pace and working hard enough to maintain a conversation but still breathing steadily. As I continued, I noticed that my heart rate started to increase...and increase....and increase...until I was at 182 bpm and my watch was telling me to slow down.
I took some time to walk until I was getting a better reading, then I would start running again. However, this slight increase kept happening...even though I wasn't changing my level of exhertion at all.
In the end, it had taking me 36 whole minutes or running/walking to get 20 minutes of my exercise within my Target Heart Rate Zone. And I was a success compared to most of my classmates!
The whole time I was strapped up to this handy little device I just kept thinking how amazing my heart is. How much it does for me and yet there are so many times I treat it poorly. I thought about all the kids who grown up in households that don't value physical activity, healthy eating and holistic lifestyles....because that was my experience.
My heart has been through quite the few rocky roads of weight losses and gains, yet it continues to beat with a passion for physical activity and a desire to love those around me. I may not always feel or look like the most in shape person, but I am always going to strive to make heart healthy decisions that are reflective of those I hope my students and children will make someday :]
Cheers to heart health and embracing our bodies for what they are and not what the world tells us they should be!
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