Heart rate monitors, offer a unique insight into the functional capability of your body whether exercising or resting. A "window on your heart". Polar heart rate monitors were one of the first to market with a heart rate monitor, for use during sports and fitness participation, during the 1980's. As a result POLAR became a global leader in heart rate monitors for fitness & exercise. The Cardiosport brand has a pedigree based over ta similar period of time, themselves owning several important technology patents and producing some incredibly high quality products and very reasonable prices. More recently many more manufacturers and brands have entered the market, and are today providing some outstanding technology, with innovative user features, these include Timex Ironman and Oregon Scientific ranges of heart rate monitors. This artcile takes and in-depth look at Polar heart rate montiors and considers the alternatives on offer from Cardiosport, Timex and Oregon, producers of fitness technology in their own right, which has determined the course of innovation in this area of fitness training and sports performance.

A heart rate monitor, today is one part of a fitness monitor, together with features that monitor speed, distance, altitude, ascent and descent rates, plus of course stopwatch split & lap times, interval and repeat timers. The important feature of every heart rate monitor is it matches the need of continuous feedback while training, for adjusting intensity etc during the session and sophisticated post-training feedback for adjusting your traning plans based on current performance.

Today's heart rate monitors from Polar, Cardiosport, Timex & Oregon Scientific offer a solution whatever your reason to exercise, whatever your motivation to keep working out. The total range of heart rate monitors across all of these brand's their is a heart rate monitor to meet the individual needs of exercisers at all levels, from individuals keen to be engage in active living to ensure health benefits, to professional team and game players to Olympic-level athletes striving for the ultimate accolade of medal success.

Heart rate monitor features need to be taylored to meet the needs of participants in various sports and actvities including running, cycling, multisport, fitness & cross-training. These distinctions have come about as heart rate training has become more sophisticated, where speed, power, pace, distance, and time are all parameters that add to the effectiveness of fitness training sessions, as well as heart rate data. New technologies, often sport specific, to monitor for example speed and pace have therefore been incorporated into the traditional heart rate monitor to become a true fitness monitor. By way of illustrating the innovation of the technology Timex were the first to launch a Speed + Distance monitor, using GPS (Global Positioning Satelite) technoogy, shortly after that they produced the Bodylink range of product incoprorating speed + distance and heart rate monitoring into one multi-sensor fitness monitor. The Timex Bodylink System offers a truly great piece of kit for monitoring a number of the essential parameters ensuring every training session could be as effective as possible. This was then followed by the launch of the Data Recorder system to record and store traning data for latter analysis on a computer with sophisticated training diary software. The Timex Bodylink system with its module format, each technology operating as a standalone element, ensure it is an extremely versatile piece of training equipment, appropriate and suitable for use as a sports watch including chrono,alarm and timer functionality, a heart rate monitor & sports watch, a speed distance monitor and sports watch or sportwatch with all heart rate, speed distance functionality.

Heart rate monitors with features specific for Running

The Polar R-series heart rate monitor products are fature packed for the needs of runners, you shouln't be surprised that the heart rate monitors offered by Timex, Cardisoport & Oregon also offer similar and great features for the decerning runner.
Polar RS 100 heart rate monitor RSP £79.50 - described as a solid starter product for a runner looking for reliable ECG-accurate heart rate monitoring and standard timing features, plus calorie and automated training zone determination. Good alternatives include: Cardiosport's GT3, Timex's Digital Zone Trainer or Oregon Scientific's Vibra Trainer.
Polar RS200 heart rate monitor RSP £99.50 an upgraded heart rate monitor from the RS100, can be upgraded to a heart rate monitor with speed and distance monitor a foot pod module (RS200sd RSP £174.50), a sophisticated pedometer like unit. Good value and effective alternatives would be the Timex Target Trainer, which can be ugraded to a fully featured Timex Bodylink product with Timex's GPS sensor or the totally uniqie alternative to the POLAR RS200sd is Oregon Scientific's SE300 heart rate monitor with a speed sensor built into the heart rate chest transmitter belt.
Polar RS400 heart rate monitor RSP £199.50 a heart rate monitor with the additional benefits of planning, monitoring and analysing your training sessions, configurability make this product an amazing all-round heart rate monitor, although a more cost effective alternative would be the Timex Bodylink Plus option or the mid-size optin the Timex Bodylink mid-size, both include excelelnt heart rate monitor and sports watch features plus the benefit of a GPS based speed + distance montioring system, and we at FitnessMonitors UK now bundle the Data Recorder 2 & Timex Trainer system for analysing and planning training.

Heat rate monitors for fitness and cross-training

The Polar F series of heart rate monitors provide a variety of features .... today it would be reasonable to say Timex, Cardiosport and Oregon Scientific offer products that are a suitable alternative on a good, better, best within the same price range basis. Good alternatives are: Timex T5G971 - Zone Trainer Cardiosport GT2 Better alternatives are: Timex Digital Zone Trainer Best alternatives are: Oregon Vibra Trainer