First and foremost its not a requirement that to be a good cyclist you have to train using a heart rate monitor. There's plenty of professional racers who never use a heart rate monitor (hrm). They do however have the benefit of many years experience of listening to their bodies as well as physicians on hand for regular check ups and assessments. For the amateur rider looking to improve their fitness or race performance then a hrm is a good first tool to understand and use.

A basic hrm will display your current heart rate at any given moment. An average hrm will allow you to set programmable upper and lower limits and will beep if your heartrate exceeds either of these limits. An exceedingly good hrm will record your heartrate and allow you to download it to your pc for later analysis. As is often the case the amount of features on your hrm will be governed by cost but with basic hrms starting at around 50USD they are within reach of most riders.

So what are the benefits from training and racing using hrms?

It will teach you to read your body and understand why a ride on a certain day feels harder than before.

It will help you spot when you are at risk of illness or fatigue

It brings objectivity to training.

It can be used to guage effort in races and assist in saving strength for later in a time trial or hill climb.

It is the gateway for riders to begin working out what their optimum training zones are.

Look out for further features which will teach you how to discover what your theoretical maximum heart rate is as well as working out what your training zones are.

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