Max Heart Rate (Gulati, Women) Calculator

About this calculator

The Gulati formula (HRmax = 206 − 0.88 × age) is a sex-specific equation for estimating maximum heart rate in women, published by Dr. Martha Gulati and colleagues in 2010 from the St. James Women Take Heart Project, a cohort of over 5,000 asymptomatic women who underwent treadmill stress testing. It was developed specifically because the ubiquitous 220 − age formula was derived almost entirely from male subjects and tends to overestimate true HRmax in women, especially at older ages.

Exercise physiologists, cardiac stress-test labs, and fitness coaches use the Gulati formula to set more accurate target heart-rate zones for aerobic training and to interpret exercise stress-test results, since achieving too low a percentage of a mis-estimated HRmax can wrongly flag a test as submaximal or affect diagnostic sensitivity for ischemia. It is also cited in some cardiology guidelines as a more appropriate alternative to 220 − age when evaluating women's exercise capacity.

This calculator plugs your age into the Gulati equation and returns your estimated maximum heart rate, which you can then use to derive training zones (via a method like Karvonen) or compare against stress-test results.