low heart rate during exercise

[chameleon17]

Hi everyone,

I am a 19-year-old female, in good health, no history of heart problems or blood pressure problems, but I've noticed that when I run, my heart rate gets low (73 bpm) while I'm working really hard and then seems to play catch up and jumps to the 190s once I start walking again and in a few minutes recovers to a normal rate.  If I'm just jogging lightly my heart rate will be in the proper cardio range, but whenever I push myself more it drops 60-70 bpm.
Is this something I should be worried about or is this normal?

Any advice would be appreciated!

[chameleon17]

It's just whatever is built in to the cardio machines.  It has happened on every machine I've used, but are these monitors unreliable?

[itdood]

I would first suspect that your hear rate monitor (HRM) is bad, low quality, needs new batteries, or you might need to change placement.  It sounds like it's having trouble detecting systoles at higher rates which is common.  

If your heart were actually jumping rates like that, *assuming* these were ventricular rates, you'd be symptomatic, and obviously you are not symptomatic.

What type of HRM are we talking about?