Rothstein Quoted in Reader’s Digest Health Story

Alex Rothstein, M.S., instructor for the Exercise Science program, was quoted in an article about heart rate for the Reader’s Digest wellness site The Healthy. He recommends that people follow the Karvonen Formula to calculate their fat-burning heart rate.

“An individual subtracts their age from 220 to get their ‘age-predicted heart rate max,’ and then subtracts their resting heart rate from this number to get their heart rate reserve. If you want to exercise at 75 percent of your heart rate reserve, you would multiply the heart rate reserve by 0.75 and then add back the resting heart rate. This new number would be the target heart rate to work at 75 percent of one’s heart rate reserve,” says Rothstein. He also adds that people are often surprised to learn that the fat-burning heart rate zone is less intense than the cardio zone, which burns carbohydrates at a higher rate.