Max heart rate by age

What is the average max heart rate at each age?

The chart below shows the average max heart rate for ages 18 to 75. Max heart rate is the most times your heart can beat in a minute at the end of an all-out effort. Find your age and read across.

Averages for groups of people. A single person can sit well above or below their row.

How do you read the max heart rate chart?

Each number is in beats a minute. Each one estimates the average max for people that age.

The Tanaka column comes from a 2001 study that pooled 351 studies with 18,712 people.^[1] Its formula is 208 minus 0.7 times age. Another team looked back at 908 lab tests on 132 people over 25 years. They got almost the same line, 207 minus 0.7 times age.^[2]

The 220 minus age column is the older shortcut many charts still use. The Tanaka study found that it gives young adults too high a max and older adults too low a max.^[1]

• At 40, both columns read 180.
• Under 40, 220 minus age reads higher. At 20, it reads 200 against 194.
• Over 40, 220 minus age reads lower, and the gap grows. At 70, it reads 150 against 159.

A Norwegian study of 3,320 healthy adults also found that older formulas guessed too low for people over 30. Real maxes in older adults and in women ran higher than earlier reports showed. That study's own line was 211 minus 0.64 times age.^[3] It runs about 4 to 8 beats above the Tanaka line from age 18 to 75.

For an age between rows, do the math yourself. Take 0.7 times your age away from 208. At 33, that is 208 minus 23.1, or about 185. The max heart rate calculator does the math for you and draws your training bands too.

Why does max heart rate drop with age?

Your heartbeat starts in a small patch of cells that sets the pace of every beat. These cells fire on their own. Nerve signals and adrenaline make them fire faster when you work hard.

The built-in rate of these cells slows with age.^[4] Scientists call it the intrinsic heart rate. It is the rate your heart keeps with no nerve signals pushing it up or down.

The Tanaka team suggested that this slower built-in rate may be the main reason max heart rate drops.^[1] A 2008 study of 30 healthy men put that idea to the test.

The older men averaged a max of 162 at about age 65. The young men averaged 191 at about age 25. A slower built-in rate and a weaker response to adrenaline together explained 83% of that gap. The built-in rate played by far the biggest part.^[4]

Research in mice shows the change in single cells. The pace-setting cells from old mice fired more slowly than the same cells from young mice.^[5]

The Tanaka line drops about 0.7 beats a minute each year, or about 7 beats a decade.^[1] The Norwegian line drops a little slower, at about 6 beats a decade.^[3]

Does staying fit slow the drop?

The studies say no. In the Tanaka study, inactive, active and endurance-trained adults lost max at the same rate with age.^[1]

One study followed older endurance runners over time. It tested 86 men and 49 women two times with about 8.5 years in between. The men were about 54 at the first test and the women about 49. Max heart rate fell in men and women of every age group.^[6]

The drop did not depend on training. Runners who kept their fitness or their weekly distance lost as much max as runners who did not.^[6] The average max is lower at 60 than at 40 whether people train or not.

Does fitness change your max heart rate?

Not by much. In the Tanaka lab group, inactive adults had a line of 212 minus 0.7 times age. Endurance-trained adults had a line of 205 minus 0.6 times age. The study found the two lines too close to call different.^[1] At 40, those lines give 184 and 181.

The Norwegian study found the same. Its age line held across people with high and low fitness, and the differences between groups were small.^[3]

A small study of 52 adults aged 18 to 25 found a bigger gap. The inactive group averaged 197 and the active group averaged 191.^[7] That group was small and young. The two larger studies found only small differences by fitness.

So your max says little about your fitness. Two runners the same age can share a max of 185 and have very different fitness. A faster runner can even have a lower max than a slower runner the same age.

Your max works more like shoe size. It sets the size of your training bands.

Fitness shows up in VO₂max instead. VO₂max is your aerobic capacity, the most oxygen your body can use when you go all-out.

Training can raise VO₂max. One study gave moderately trained men four 4-minute intervals at 90 to 95% of max. Their VO₂max rose 7.2% in 8 weeks.^[13]

Does the sport or the test change your max?

The sport can move your max by a few beats. One study tested 143 triathletes on a treadmill and on an indoor bike. The men averaged a max of 183 on the treadmill and 177 on the bike. The women averaged 183 and 179.^[8]

A max from your runs is the one to use for running.

The kind of effort matters too. Another study measured 20 college distance runners three ways. Their heart rates averaged 206 in a race and 207 in a hard track session. On a lab treadmill test, the same runners averaged 194.^[9]

The lab test came in 12 to 13 beats under what these runners reached in a race or a hard session. The authors advised runners like these to set their training from the max seen in races or hard sessions.

Why can your max be far above or below the chart?

The chart shows averages. People the same age spread out around each one.

In the Tanaka lab group, that spread was about 10 beats a minute on either side of the line. It ran from 7 to 11 beats at different ages.^[1] The Norwegian study found a typical miss of 10.8 beats.^[3]

Another study of 762 adults who did not exercise regularly found typical misses of 11.4 beats for the Tanaka formula and 12.4 beats for 220 minus age. The Tanaka formula missed the fitter half of the group by 10.3 beats and the less fit half by 12.4.^[10]

Knowing more about a person barely helps. A study of 3,374 mostly active adults added body size, fitness and the type of test to age. Those extra facts made the guess only slightly better.^[11]

Picture two 50-year-old runners. The chart gives both of them 173. One might have a real max of 163 and the other 183. Both fall inside the usual spread, and no row in the chart can tell them apart.

The gap can be bigger. Tanaka's paper warns that 220 minus age could miss some older adults by more than 20 beats.^[1]

So the chart is a starting point. Your own max from a hard race or a hard effort is a better number than any row. How to find your max heart rate with an Apple Watch explains where to look.

How do you use the chart for training?

Start with your row. Then swap in a real max as soon as you have one.

Each band on this page is a percent of your max. Easy runs from 60% of max up to 79% for men and 83% for women.

Those top edges come from blood tests on 165 runners. The tests measured lactate. Your muscles release lactate faster as the effort climbs. In those runners, lactate started to rise at 78.9% of max for men and 83.6% for women on average.^[12]

If you train by Zone 2, Easy is that same easy running. Zone 2 heart rate explains where the common chart stops.

Here is one example. A 50-year-old man gets 173 from the chart, so Easy ends at 136. If his real max is 183, Easy ends at 144. That is 8 more beats of easy running.

The chart below draws every band from the Tanaka average at each age.

Beats a minute, with max heart rate estimated from age (Tanaka). A measured max moves every band.

A measured max stays useful for years. The average max drops only about 0.7 beats a minute each year, so a number you saw last year is still close.^[1]

Diastra reads every workout your Apple Watch saved in Apple Health. It starts from the Tanaka estimate in the chart above. When your workouts show a higher max, the number rises to match. Diastra needs a high heart rate you held in one workout and matched within 8 beats in another, so a single spike never sets your max.

A guided test can raise the number too. A max you type replaces the estimate whether it is higher or lower. Diastra says which of these your bands came from.