A normal resting heart rate for adults falls between 60 and 100 beats per minute (bpm). This is measured while you’re awake, calm, and sitting still. Your actual rate within that range depends on your fitness level, age, medications, and even the time of day.
Normal Heart Rate by Age
Children’s hearts beat significantly faster than adults’, and the younger the child, the faster the rate. Here’s what’s considered normal while awake:
- Newborn to 3 months: 85 to 205 bpm
- 3 months to 2 years: 100 to 190 bpm
- 2 to 10 years: 60 to 140 bpm
- Over 10 years and adults: 60 to 100 bpm
Those wide ranges reflect how much a child’s heart rate fluctuates with activity, crying, and feeding. During sleep, children’s rates drop considerably. A toddler who hits 190 bpm while running around might settle to 75 to 160 bpm while napping. By age 10, a child’s heart rate range looks essentially the same as an adult’s.
Why Athletes Often Have Lower Heart Rates
If your resting heart rate sits below 60 bpm, that’s technically called bradycardia. But for physically fit people, a low rate is usually a sign of cardiovascular efficiency, not a problem. Regular endurance exercise causes the heart to pump more blood per beat, so it doesn’t need to beat as often to circulate the same volume.
This adaptation can be dramatic. In a study of 465 endurance athletes, 38% had a minimum heart rate at or below 40 bpm on a 24-hour monitor, and a small number dropped below 30 bpm. These athletes were asymptomatic. The adaptation comes from physical remodeling of the heart’s natural pacemaker cells combined with changes in how the nervous system regulates heart rhythm. Genetics play a role too: both fitness level and inherited traits contribute to how low an athlete’s heart rate goes.
What Happens During Sleep
Your heart rate doesn’t stay at its daytime resting level overnight. During sleep, it typically runs 20% to 30% lower than your waking rate. For a healthy adult, that translates to roughly 50 to 75 bpm. The deepest stages of sleep produce the lowest rates, while REM sleep (when dreaming occurs) can cause brief increases. If you use a wearable device, don’t be alarmed by overnight readings in the low 50s or even high 40s, as long as you feel fine during the day.
When Heart Rate Falls Outside the Normal Range
Clinically, a resting heart rate below 60 bpm is bradycardia, and above 100 bpm is tachycardia. Neither label automatically means something is wrong. Context matters. A rate of 55 bpm in someone who walks regularly and feels fine is unremarkable. A rate of 110 bpm after two cups of coffee and a stressful morning is predictable.
What deserves attention is a persistently unusual rate paired with symptoms: dizziness, fainting, shortness of breath, or chest discomfort. A heart rate that stays elevated at rest for days or weeks without an obvious cause is also worth investigating.
What Affects Your Resting Heart Rate
Several everyday factors can push your heart rate up or down within (or beyond) the normal range:
- Fever: Body temperature increases heart rate by roughly 10 bpm for every degree of elevated temperature. A child with a 102°F fever might see a resting rate 30 bpm higher than usual.
- Medications: Beta-blockers, one of the most commonly prescribed heart medications, work by blocking stress hormones from reaching the heart. They deliberately slow the heart rate and are a frequent reason someone’s rate sits below 60 bpm. Decongestants and some asthma medications can raise it.
- Caffeine and nicotine: Both are stimulants that temporarily increase heart rate.
- Dehydration and heat: When blood volume drops or your body works to cool itself, the heart compensates by beating faster.
- Stress and anxiety: Emotional arousal triggers the same fight-or-flight hormones as physical exertion, raising your rate even while sitting still.
- Body position: Standing up causes a brief rise compared to sitting or lying down.
Because so many variables affect heart rate in the moment, the most useful number is your baseline: what your heart rate looks like consistently, measured at the same time of day under similar conditions.
How to Measure Your Heart Rate
The simplest method requires only two fingers and a clock. Sit quietly for a few minutes first, then find your pulse at either of two spots:
At the wrist: Turn your palm face up. Place the tips of your index and middle fingers on the thumb side of your wrist, in the groove between the bone and the tendon. Press lightly. Pressing too hard can actually block blood flow and make the pulse harder to find.
At the neck: Place two fingertips in the groove alongside your windpipe. Press gently to feel the pulse in the carotid artery. Either side works, but avoid this method if you’ve been told you have plaque buildup in your neck arteries.
Count the beats for a full 60 seconds for the most accurate reading. A shortcut is to count for 15 seconds and multiply by four, though this magnifies any counting error. The number you get is your resting heart rate in bpm.
Maximum Heart Rate and Exercise
Your maximum heart rate is the fastest your heart can beat during intense exertion. It declines with age regardless of fitness level. The classic formula is 220 minus your age, which would give a 40-year-old a predicted max of 180 bpm. This formula is simple but imprecise, especially for older adults, where it can underestimate the true maximum by up to 40 bpm.
A more accurate formula, developed from exercise testing of over 3,300 healthy adults aged 19 to 89 at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, calculates it as 211 minus 0.64 times your age. For that same 40-year-old, this gives a predicted max of about 185 bpm. For a 70-year-old, the traditional formula predicts 150 bpm while the updated formula predicts 166, a meaningful difference when setting exercise intensity targets.
These formulas estimate population averages. Individual maximum heart rates can vary by 10 to 20 bpm in either direction. The only way to know your true maximum is a supervised exercise stress test.