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Heart Rate Zone Calculator for Apple Watch Workouts

See five personal training zones and the time each workout spent in them.

Check my heart rate zones

On-device. No account.

Example workout. Your card uses your Apple Health data.

Body Insights turns your maximum and resting heart rate into five personal training zones. It works as a heart rate zone calculator for the data your Apple Watch records.

Apple Watch records your heart rate. Apple Health stores the available records. Body Insights uses them to calculate your ranges.

Your Personal screen shows each zone in beats per minute, or bpm. After a workout, the saved workout card shows how much time you spent in each zone.

What does the heart rate zone calculator show?

The Heart Rate Zones card shows Zone 1 through Zone 5, a training label, and the bpm range for each zone. The example below uses a maximum heart rate of 180 bpm and a resting heart rate of 60 bpm.

  1. Zone 1

    Warm-Up

    0-132 bpm

  2. Zone 2

    Fat Burning

    132-144 bpm

  3. Zone 3

    Aerobic

    144-156 bpm

  4. Zone 4

    Anaerobic

    156-168 bpm

  5. Zone 5

    Max Effort

    168+ bpm

Your ranges use your own maximum and resting heart rate, so they can differ from the example.

Apple Watch can show your current zone during a workout. Body Insights saves the time-in-zone breakdown with the workout card. You can review it later.

How can you use your heart rate zones?

Use the range and the workout breakdown together. The range tells you where a recorded heart rate belongs. The bar tells you how long the workout stayed there.

Check a lower-intensity session

If you planned a lower-intensity workout, look at the lower zones first. The bars show whether most recorded time stayed there.

Compare similar workouts

Compare time in each zone across the same type of workout. More time in an upper zone means your recorded heart rate stayed in that range longer.

Review a hard effort

Check the upper zones after a demanding session. The workout card shows whether the high heart rate lasted or appeared only briefly.

How do you change maximum heart rate?

Use a manual maximum if you already know the value you want the app to use.

  1. Open Personal, then Heart Rate Zones.
  2. Adjust Maximum Heart Rate.
  3. Tap Save Max HR to recalculate the five zones.
  4. Tap Reset to HealthKit Value to return to the automatic value.

The manual value stays active until you reset it. Body Insights needs a valid maximum and resting heart rate. It shows the zone ranges when both values are ready.

How does Body Insights calculate the zones?

Body Insights builds the result in four steps.

  1. Start with your manual maximum heart rate. Without one, use a valid maximum observed in the latest 90 days or an age-based estimate.
  2. Read your current resting heart rate.
  3. Use the space between resting and maximum heart rate to create five ranges.
  4. Group available workout heart-rate samples by zone and total the time in each one.

Changing the manual maximum clears the saved zones and calculates them again. A new automatic maximum or resting heart rate can also change the bpm ranges.

See your heart rate zones

Body Insights calculates five ranges and shows how long each workout spent in them.

Check my heart rate zones