Heart rate recovery: what is a good number

Heart rate recovery (HRR) is how many beats per minute (bpm) your heart rate falls in the first minutes after you stop exercising. A drop of more than 12 bpm in the first minute is the usual normal cut-off, and a drop of 22 bpm or more at 2 minutes is a common reference for clinical treadmill tests. Faster recovery is associated with lower cardiovascular risk.

Those cut-offs come from studies of thousands of adults who did a maximal treadmill test. A watch measures recovery after everyday workouts, which are rarely maximal, so your own trend is more useful than a single number. This guide covers the ranges, how to measure HRR cleanly, and what Apple Watch calls Cardio Recovery. For resting values, see the resting heart rate by age chart.

What is heart rate recovery?

Heart rate recovery is the difference between your heart rate at the end of exercise and your heart rate one or two minutes later. For example, if you finish at 165 bpm and are at 140 bpm one minute later, your 1-minute HRR is 25 bpm. It reflects how quickly the parasympathetic (vagal) nervous system slows the heart again.

The original Cleveland Clinic study explains the idea: exercise raises heart rate partly by reducing vagal tone, and recovery after exercise is a function of vagal reactivation. Because reduced vagal activity is a known risk factor, a slow fall in heart rate after exercise was tested as a marker of risk, and it held up.

What is a good heart rate recovery?

A good 1-minute heart rate recovery is above 12 bpm, and a good 2-minute recovery is 22 bpm or more, based on the cut-offs used in large clinical studies. Below the cut-offs, studies found a higher risk of death over the following years.

Time after stopping	Cut-off for abnormal	Source population
1 minute	Drop of 12 bpm or less	2,428 adults, symptom-limited treadmill test, 6-year follow-up
2 minutes	Drop of less than 22 bpm	2,193 men, treadmill test, mean 7-year follow-up

Sources: Cole et al., N Engl J Med 1999; Shetler et al., J Am Coll Cardiol 2001.

How to read your own value, as a simple guide:

1-minute HRR	Reading
12 bpm or less	Below the clinical cut-off; check how you measured, and see a doctor if it is consistent after hard efforts
13 to 20 bpm	Above the cut-off
More than 20 bpm	Comfortably above the cut-off

Bands above the cut-off are a reading aid, not clinical categories. Compare with your own history from the same type of workout.

Why does heart rate recovery matter for health?

Slow heart rate recovery is associated with higher risk of heart disease and death in large studies. In the 1999 study, people with abnormal 1-minute recovery had double the risk of death over 6 years after adjusting for age, fitness and other factors. A 2017 meta-analysis found 9% higher all-cause mortality for every 10 bpm lower recovery.

Study	People	Finding
Cole et al. 1999	2,428 adults	Abnormal recovery: unadjusted relative risk of death 4.0, adjusted 2.0
Shetler et al. 2001	2,193 men	2-minute drop under 22 bpm: hazard ratio 2.6
Qiu et al. 2017, meta-analysis	41,600 people in 9 studies	Slow vs fast recovery: hazard ratio 1.68 for death; each 10 bpm lower: 1.13 for cardiovascular events, 1.09 for death

Sources: as listed. All are associations from observational studies.

These studies used maximal treadmill tests in clinics, often in people referred for heart testing. A wrist-worn value after a casual workout is not the same measurement. Use it as a personal trend, not a risk score.

How do you measure heart rate recovery?

To measure heart rate recovery, finish a hard effort, note your heart rate at the moment you stop, then stand or sit still and note it again after 1 minute and 2 minutes. The drop is your HRR. Use the same workout type, the same effort and the same recovery position each time so values are comparable.

• Stop, do not cool down: A walking or jogging cool-down keeps heart rate higher and lowers the number.
• Same effort: Recovery after an easy jog is different from recovery after an all-out interval.
• Same position: Standing, sitting and lying give different values. Pick one.
• Same device: Do not mix a chest strap and a watch in one trend.

What is Cardio Recovery on Apple Watch?

Cardio Recovery is Apple's name for heart rate recovery in the Health app. Apple Health stores it as a one-minute heart rate recovery value: the reduction in heart rate from the peak exercise rate to the rate one minute after the workout ended. It is always recorded as a positive number of beats per minute.

Because the value is tied to the end of the workout, how you end the workout matters. End the workout on the watch right after your last hard effort, then stay still for a minute or two. If you keep the workout running through a walk-down, the peak and the 1-minute value both shift, and the recovery number becomes less comparable.

What affects heart rate recovery?

Heart rate recovery reflects how quickly vagal control returns after exercise. On a given day, the effort level, how you stop, your position and the device all change the number. In the 1999 study, recovery still predicted outcomes after adjusting for age, sex, medicines, resting heart rate and workload achieved.

Regular aerobic exercise is associated with a lower resting heart rate, and it is the usual advice for anyone who wants to improve cardiovascular fitness. The US Physical Activity Guidelines recommend 150 to 300 minutes of moderate or 75 to 150 minutes of vigorous activity a week, plus muscle strengthening on 2 days. For an easy aerobic base, see zone 2 heart rate. For the fitness marker that goes with recovery, see VO2 max by age.

When should you see a doctor?

See a doctor if your heart rate recovery is consistently 12 bpm or less at 1 minute after hard efforts that you measured carefully, or if you have chest pain, pressure, unusual breathlessness, dizziness, fainting or palpitations during or after exercise. Get emergency care for chest pain that does not stop with rest.

A doctor can arrange a formal exercise test with an ECG, which is how the cut-offs in this article were set. A watch value is a prompt for that conversation, not a diagnosis.

How Svanu uses your workouts

Svanu uses your workouts to build daily strain, a 0 to 100 score from active energy (45%), intensity-weighted workout load (35%) and steps (20%). Your daily target strain band comes from today's recovery and your own recent strain history. Training load compares acute (7-day) and chronic (42-day) exponentially weighted load from daily strain.

The recovery score compares this morning's HRV and resting heart rate with your own recent baseline, plus sleep. Together they show how hard training days line up with your next-morning recovery. For how load is balanced over weeks, see the acute:chronic workload ratio guide and the recovery score explainer, or see the Svanu home page.