What is a normal resting heart rate for adults?

For most adults, anywhere between 60 and 100 beats per minute is perfectly normal, though that's an annoyingly wide range. What's actually normal for you depends on your age, fitness level, biological sex, and lifestyle—so your own baseline is far more useful than any population average.

Why does my sports watch show a different resting heart rate than my friend's watch?

Different manufacturers use different algorithms to calculate resting heart rate—some prioritise nighttime data, others blend day and night readings, and they use different methods for filtering out dodgy readings. They're not necessarily wrong; they're just using different definitions of 'resting', so two watches can legitimately show different numbers from the same day.

Is it bad if my resting heart rate is higher than normal one morning?

A resting heart rate that's 5 to 10 beats above your normal baseline is usually your body flagging that you're still recovering from hard training, fighting off illness, dehydrated, stressed, or didn't sleep well. None of these are emergencies, but they're worth knowing about before you attempt another tough workout.

Your Watch Has Opinions

When Your Heart Rate Drops and Your Watch Starts Lying to You

Why chasing the lowest resting heart rate might mean you're missing what your body's actually trying to tell you, and how to use the number properly instead of treating it as a prize.

23 October 20269 min read