As per request, my mom bought me a heart rate monitor as an early birthday present.

Polar F4 (http://www.proten.com/polar-f4.html)

But I'm not sure that's it's really going to be very useful.

I've always heard that they're a good thing to have, but I don't know what for. Should I aim to exercise within a target heart rate? Can I try to reduce my resting heart rate?

I haven't figured out everything it does yet, but it seems like there should be more features on it, like music, or something that praises me if I do something good.

How does everyone feel about their heart rate monitors? Any of them have any really neat features?

just try to get the number up as high as you can!
or as low as you can... my life's goal is to get it to say 29 bpm.

I have the S725 (http://www.proten.com/polar-s725.html)
I use every feature on it, every day.

Except the interval feature... I havnt used that yet.
I do that manually.

As per request, my mom bought me a heart rate monitor as an early birthday present.

Polar F4 (http://www.proten.com/polar-f4.html)

But I'm not sure that's it's really going to be very useful.

I've always heard that they're a good thing to have, but I don't know what for. Should I aim to exercise within a target heart rate? Can I try to reduce my resting heart rate?

I haven't figured out everything it does yet, but it seems like there should be more features on it, like music, or something that praises me if I do something good.

How does everyone feel about their heart rate monitors? Any of them have any really neat features?

The F4 has a good feature set. The only thing it doesn't have that I really like is the VO2max estimation from resting heart rate, a feature which Polar calls "Ownindex".

Here are things to do with your F4:

1. On the morning after a rest day, when you can lie down for about twenty minutes, rest lying down with your hands at your sides for about fifteen minutes and take the heart rate for about five minutes. The average it reports should be your resting heart rate. If you do VO2max or lactate training, that number will go down. The lower that number, the more fat you burn as opposed to carbs, and the more calories you burn in total at a given heart rate.

2. Wear the heart rate monitor for a representative portion of a rest day. At least a few hours. Check that the calories that it counts jibe with your current understanding of your diet. Wear it for a nap and see if that tallies with your normal hours of sleep. The heart rate monitor should come up with a pretty good daily calorie requirement this way.

3. Do a Cooper or Balke test. This will estimate your VO2max and will allow you to check the calories that the monitor comes up with. Even if you had a monitor that estimates VO2max itself (such as Polar F11) you want to check that number.

4. Go to one of those calorie estimation sites now that you have good calorie counts. Check out how far off they are for you.

5. Wear the heart monitor during your regular workout. You will see your heart rate respond to different sorts of exercise. Don't worry about target rates. Just observe your heart rate. See which exercise has which effect.

6. Check your lactate threshold. If you get on a treadmill or elliptical and go as hard as you can for 25 minutes, then the heart rate that you sustained for most of that time (you could use the average totalled by the machine) is the heart rate which is somewhere below, but probably close to, your lactate threshold.

7. Estimate your Maximum heart rate (MHR). For this you have to do a few bouts of top intensity exercise while you are warmed up. Any rate you can hold for ten seconds is below your MHR, but if you can only hold it for ten seconds, it's probably within a few beats of your MHR.

Knowing your MHR, VO2max and lactate threshold are really useful for personalized exercise training. If you rely on age based formulas for MHR, questionnaire based VO2max estimates, and the nominal lactate threshold, then you get conventional training zones, which are normally way, way, off. "45 minutes at 65%" is such a joke. It's like telling a guy that his bench press in pounds will be his body weight plus 75 minus his age. That's a formula that isn't utterly stupid, and it sort of sounds right, but as soon as you start lifting you find out that everyone is different. Your heart muscle is not magically the same as everyone else your weight, sex, and age any more than your triceps muscle is.

If you want specific examples of heart rates and exercises, that gets discussed a bit in my journal.

Here are things to do with your F4:
....
Cool! That's what I was looking for. I'll keep those things in mind. So far the most fun we've had is strapping it to the kids and using it as a lie detector test.:lol:

Now, to find out....Which burns more calories? Vacuuming or mopping?

This thread is eerily similar to M@'s "I got my I-pod, when does my life change" post a few months ago.:lol:

I'm sure that in a month or two you'll be addicted, and won't be able to go anywhere without it.

Or you could try sex as cardio (http://forums.johnstonefitness.com/showthread.php?p=145345#post145345) just in case your husband doesn't think you're a total fitness weirdo yet.