Will sprinting lower my resting heart rate? page

[Knifegill]

Lately my heart beats faster. I gave up cardio last year. I lift heavy and sprint, and ride my bike once in awhile. But there's no Richard Simmons on my shoulder anymore telling me to sweat to the oldies. I want my slow heartbeat back. Do I need some cardio for this? Am I missing something here?

[primalrob]

lifting heavy and sprinting should help with your heart, as both get it working really hard in short bursts. but, your heartbeat can quicken for a lot of reasons even while your resting, like any kind of inflamation or infection, or even to pump more blood to those areas affected by lifting and sprinting.
this seems like a perfect subject for a little experimentation. start measuring your heart rate at different times to see how it's affected: upon waking, after eating, post workout, way post workout, before falling asleep, etc., and see if it changes on workout days and rest days. i would also rest for full week, perhaps to get a sense of baseline. measure for a while, then increase your cardio for a few weeks and measure all the same times again. granted, it's only a n=1 experiment, but it would be great to see how cardio and lifting affect heart rate differently.

[Owly]

Also, monitoring resting heart rate (before rising in the morning) is helpful if you're training because an increase in RHR can be an early indicator of overtraining. Not saying this is the case for you now since I get the sense that you're fairly sensible about workouts, but it's a good habit to get into if you are working out a lot.

As Rob said, it can also be a sign of a lot of other things. I agree that monitoring over a while could be a useful n=1 thing to see what affects your heart rate.