Get Your Heart Pumping With Fitbit’s Active Zone Minutes

The original version of this post was published 3/31/2020.

Did you know that leading health experts say you need to get your heart pumping for at least 150 minutes each week? Based on recommendations from the World Health Organization, American Heart Association, and others, we should do at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity activity or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity activity each week.* These activity targets help support overall health, weight management, and disease prevention. Additionally, regular physical activity provides a variety of other benefits, including helping people sleep better, feel better, and perform daily tasks more easily.*

But, how can you make sure you’re getting enough heart pumping minutes to meet those guidelines? 

Enter Active Zone Minutes, a more personalized way to measure your physical activity. We automatically calculate “Active Zones” personalized to you, based on your resting heart rate and age. These Active Zones are targets for your heart rate during exercise, so you’ll know if you’re putting in the effort to reach the activity guidelines. Active Zone Minutes can be earned for any exercise you enjoy, HIIT workout in your living room to a jog on a local trail. You’ll get more credit for more intense activity, helping you make the most of your limited time. Now let’s get into specifics…

Here’s how Active Zone Minutes work: 

Earn Active Zone Minutes for activities you enjoy. Because Active Zone Minutes are heart rate based, you can earn them throughout your day, doing anything that gets your heart pumping. You can earn minutes for activities from yoga and HIIT to carrying groceries and gardening, as long as you reach your HR zone threshold for earning Active Zone Minutes.

Personalized to you. Your heart rate zones are personalized based on your resting heart rate and age. As your cardiovascular fitness changes, your personalized heart rate zones will adapt with you. Check out your unique beats per minute (bpm) targets for fat burn, cardio, and peak heart rate zones in the Fitbit app.

Get your heart pumping to earn minutes. The three target heart rate zones are fat burn, cardio, and peak, which are now all personalized to your cardiovascular fitness and age in your Fitbit app. 

• To reach the fat burn zone, you can go on a brisk walk, do yoga, or lift weights. 
• To reach the cardio zone you can try running, biking, or a HIIT workout. 
• If you’re advanced, to hit your peak zone, you can try sprinting for a few seconds or biking uphill, but remember to recover after. 

More intensity = more minutes earned. Fitbit will give you 2x Active Zone Minutes for time spent in your cardio or peak heart rate zone. Why? Major health organizations agree that you can get the same health benefits for 75 vigorous intensity minutes/week or 150 moderate intensity minutes/week. Because of that, Fitbit will give you 2x credit for more intense effort, resulting in more efficient workouts for you. So step up your effort during your next workout and be done in less time!

Here’s an example of how it works:

Your 20-minute workout earned you 30 Active Zone Minutes. Is it magic? No, but it is an efficient way to view your activity and make every minute count! And don’t worry about the math, we’ll do it for you. 

Real-time motivation: When you get to your active heart rate zones during exercise—fat burn, cardio, or peak—you’ll feel unique on-wrist buzzes, giving you some in-the-moment motivation to keep up the momentum. Those buzzes mean you’re earning Active Zone Minutes toward your weekly goal.

Customize your weekly goal. In the Fitbit app, you can set your AZM goal for the week and follow your progress. You can also see how long you’ve spent in each zone and learn which activities contributed to your totals. Most people aim for 150 minutes per week, but you can try aiming for more for even greater weight management and health benefits.

Set an Active Zone Minutes goal for your workout. Your device has 20 goal-based exercise modes, plus you can set a goal for time, distance, calories, and now Active Zone Minutes. Track your progress against your goal while you exercise! 

Celebrate your efforts. Get friendly words of encouragement right on your wrist when you squeeze in extra heart-pumping activities throughout your day or week. You’ll also receive celebrations when you hit your weekly Active Zone Minutes goal.

Workout Videos to help you hit your goals. Did you know that the Fitbit app has workout videos that you can do anywhere, and most require minimal equipment? Check out the “Discover” tile in your Fitbit app for a hand-picked group of “heart-pumping workouts” aimed at getting your heart rate up. Join Fitbit Premium for even more workout content and guided programs such as Full Body Strong.  

To redeem your 90-day Premium trial, open the Fitbit app and tap on the “Premium” tab in the lower-right corner. This trial offer is only valid through the Fitbit app and is only available for new Premium users.

Availability: Active Zone Minutes is available on Fitbit Luxe, Fitbit Charge 4, Fitbit Inspire 2, Fitbit Sense, Fitbit Ionic, and Fitbit Versa family of devices.

______________________________________________________________________________

*Suggested daily goal for Active Zone Minutes is based on American Heart Association, US Health Department and World Health Organization recommendations to get 150 minutes of moderate or 75 minutes of vigorous activity per week, which has been linked to better overall health and well-being, disease prevention and improved quality of life.

The post Get Your Heart Pumping With Fitbit’s Active Zone Minutes appeared first on Fitbit Blog.

source https://blog.fitbit.com/active-zone-minutes/