Heart rate tracking

Perfect — your Apple Watch is actually one of the best tools for tracking recovery.

Here’s how to set it up properly so it helps your tennis/pickleball performance and fat-loss plan.

1️⃣ Turn On Heart Rate Tracking (Basic Setup)

On your iPhone:

1. Open the Watch app

2. Tap Privacy

3. Make sure Heart Rate is ON

4. Make sure Fitness Tracking is ON

On the Watch:

• Go to Settings → Heart Rate

• Ensure:

  
  

  • Heart Rate = ON

  • Irregular rhythm notifications (optional)

• 
  

That’s it for baseline tracking.

2️⃣ Track Resting Heart Rate (Very Important)

Your resting heart rate (RHR) tells us recovery level.

To see it:

1. Open the Health app on iPhone

2. Browse → Heart → Resting Heart Rate

OR

On Watch:

• Open Heart app

• Scroll down to Resting Rate

What to look for:

• If your baseline is, say, 58 bpm

• And tomorrow morning it’s 65–68 bpm

  
  

  → That suggests fatigue or incomplete recovery.

For you:

• Normal RHR = good to train

• +5 bpm above normal = reduce volume

• +8–10 bpm = active recovery only

3️⃣ Track During Pickleball / Tennis

Start a workout manually:

On Watch:

1. Open Workout

2. Choose:

   
   

   • “Tennis”

   • OR “Other” if pickleball not listed

3. 
   

4. Swipe right and tap “Start”

Afterwards you’ll see:

• Average heart rate

• Max heart rate

• Time in zones

4️⃣ Heart Rate Zones (This is where it gets powerful)

On iPhone:

Watch app → Workout → Heart Rate Zones

You can:

• Use automatic

• Or manually set zones

For you (approximate at 206 lbs, active male):

If age ~50–60 range, max HR estimate ≈ 160–170

If younger, ≈ 175–180

Zone guidance:

• Zone 2 (fat burning) = 60–70% max

• Zone 3–4 = performance

• Zone 5 = high intensity

We want:

• Pickleball mostly Zone 2–3

• Tennis will spike into 4–5

• Swim ideally Zone 2

5️⃣ Best Recovery Metric: Heart Rate Variability (HRV)

In Health app:

Browse → Heart → Heart Rate Variability

This is even better than resting HR.

Higher HRV = recovered

Lower HRV than baseline = stressed

You don’t need exact numbers yet. Just watch trends.

How You Use This Practically

Friday Morning:

• Check Resting HR

• Check how you feel

• If HR elevated + legs heavy → cut strength volume in half

If HR normal and you feel strong → do full planned session.

You are training enough now that objective data is smart.

Tell me:

• What is your typical resting HR?

• And what age range are you in?

Then I can calculate precise zone targets for your tennis conditioning.