Breath Test or Heart Rate? Make an Appointment Ask a Question Search Conditions When you exercise, focus on breathing instead of your heart rate. Watch to find out why, and learn how to perform the breath test from the heart experts at National Jewish Health. Related Videos 3 Keys to a Healthy Heart Heart Attack Symptoms in Women What is Chest Pain? 4 Ways to Prevent Heart Disease What Is a Heart Murmur? What Causes a Heart Attack? Symptoms of a Weak Heart Angina = Heart Attack How to Prevent a Heart Attack when Shoveling Snow How to Lower Blood Pressure with Simple Changes Ask a National Jewish Health Cardiologist if You Should Exercise in Bad Weather Intensive Cardiac Rehab Has Amazing Outcomes Does Cold Weather Exercising Burn More Calories? 4 Simple Ways to Be the Healthiest You How to Eat Healthy During the Holidays Lifestyle Medicine: Improve Health, Food, Sleep, Exercise & Stress Management What Has Love Got to Do with Your Health? Walking Is Nature’s Best Medicine Walk With A Doc Transforms Lives Why Do We Connect Love With The Heart? Truth: You Can Reverse Heart Disease, Derrick Did How to Be Heart-Healthy All Day Long Transcript Unless you are a truly elite athlete, worrying about your heart rate to the point where you are adjusting everything every few minutes really makes exercise less enjoyable. More importantly, is actually the breath test. And the breath test very simple. If you go walking, biking, jogging, swimming, and you’re unable to complete a full sentence. That’s where you want to be. And the goal is to be there for thirty minutes. So, for a lot of people just starting out, they warm up and get to the zone where they are short of breath, they stay there for a minute or two or three, and then they calm down and come back up again. So it might take ninety minutes, initially, to get those thirty minutes in. But, as the weeks go on, the breaks should get shorter and shorter and shorter until it is one solid thirty minute block. When you get more fit, you’ll find that heart rate tends to go down, because the heart has learned to be more efficient. Want to use this on your website? Fill out the content usage request form and then copy this code: