What is a good resting heart rate?

For most adults, a normal resting heart rate is 60 to 100 beats per minute (bpm), measured while sitting or lying down and calm.^[1] For well-trained athletes, 40 to 60 bpm is normal.^[2] Each person also has their own usual rate, and people's normal rates can differ by as much as 70 bpm.^[3]

What counts as a normal resting heart rate?

Resting heart rate

How many times your heart beats in a minute when you are not exercising.^[1] Heart rate is also called your pulse.^[1]

The American Heart Association (AHA) puts a normal resting heart rate at 60 to 100 bpm, if you are sitting or lying down, calm and feeling well.^[1] The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute gives the same range for most adults.^[10]

Children have faster hearts, and the normal range narrows as they grow. MedlinePlus, from the National Library of Medicine, lists these ranges:^[2]

Other medical sources draw the children's bands a little differently. Cleveland Clinic, for example, lists 100 to 205 bpm for newborns.^[4] For adults, the sources agree on 60 to 100.^{[1, 4, 10]}

Below 60 bpm at rest is called bradycardia, and above 100 bpm is called tachycardia.^{[5, 6]} Neither is always a problem.^[1] The sections below explain when each one matters.

Is a low resting heart rate good?

It can be. A rate under 60 does not always signal a problem.^[1] It is common in athletes, whose heart muscle does not need to work as hard.^[1] It can also come from medicines such as beta blockers, and heart rate can be lower during sleep.^[1]

Cleveland Clinic notes that rates in the 40s or 50s are common in athletes and in people taking beta blockers or calcium channel blockers.^[4] Symptoms are the signal to watch. A rate that is too slow can reduce blood flow to the brain. Its symptoms include feeling weak or tired, dizziness, confusion, fainting and shortness of breath.^[5]

What a high resting heart rate can mean

A resting rate over 100 may be tachycardia, and it usually is not normal, but it is not always a sign of a problem.^{[1, 4]} It can be temporary, for example when you are stressed or anxious, so it is worth checking again later to see if it comes down.^[4] A fast pulse may also signal an infection or dehydration.^[2]

For the common causes and the warning signs, read why your heart rate might be high.

Does a lower resting heart rate mean better health?

In large studies, a higher resting rate goes with a higher risk of death. A review of 46 studies found that each 10 bpm higher was linked with a 9% higher relative risk of death from any cause.^[7] The authors also found large differences between studies and signs of publication bias.^[7]

The authors describe resting rate as a predictor of death in the general population.^[7] That is a pattern across groups, not a forecast for one person.

In a Norwegian study of adults without known heart disease, measured twice about 10 years apart, a rising resting rate went with a higher risk of death from ischemic heart disease, but a falling rate showed no general benefit for survival.^[8] Whether lowering your own rate lowers your risk is still an open question.^{[8, 9]}

Exercise does lower it, modestly. Across 191 studies of healthy people, those who exercised lowered their resting rate by 3.3 bpm more than people who did not.^[9] Endurance training and yoga lowered it in both men and women, while strength training had no significant effect.^[9]

What moves your resting heart rate

• Temperature. A rise in body temperature may raise your heart rate, and outside temperature may affect it too.^[1]
• Standing up. Heart rate may go up a little when you first stand, then settle within a few minutes.^[1]
• Emotions and pain. Stress, anxiety, happiness, sadness and pain can all raise your pulse.^[1]
• Sleep. Poor sleep can cause a high heart rate.^[4]
• Alcohol, caffeine and smoking. All three make your heart rate go up.^[4]
• Body size. People with obesity might have a higher heart rate than people without.^[1]
• Pregnancy. Resting heart rate is higher when you are pregnant.^[4]
• Medicines. Beta blockers, calcium channel blockers and several others can slow your heart rate.^[1]

For one person, resting heart rate is fairly steady. In a study of 92,457 people wearing a fitness tracker, most had a typical weekly swing of only 3 bpm.^[3] Still, 20% had at least one week when their rate moved by 10 bpm or more.^[3]

How to measure it

1. 1Rest first. To get a resting rate, you need to have been resting for at least 10 minutes.^[2]
2. 2Place your index and middle fingers on the underside of your other wrist, below the base of your thumb, and press with flat fingers until you feel the pulse.^[2]
3. 3Count the beats for 1 full minute, or count for 30 seconds and multiply by 2.^[2]
4. 4If you use your neck instead, sit or lie down first, and never press both sides of the neck at once.^[2]
5. 5If a number looks unusual, note what you were doing right before you checked.^[4]

Some smartwatches and phone apps can also find your resting heart rate.^[10] A wrist tracker may not always match an electrocardiogram (ECG), mostly during activity and when your heart is beating fast, though other studies found the difference quite small.^[3]

Researchers are testing whether a rise above your own baseline can flag illness early.^[11] In 32 people with COVID-19, smartwatch data showed changes in heart rate, steps or sleep for 26 of them.^[11] The study had only 32 infected people, out of nearly 5,300 taking part, and it looked back at data already collected.^[11] It does not make a watch a test for infection.

When to talk to a clinician