Max Heart Rate for Women — the Gulati Formula
Nearly every max-heart-rate formula was built on men. Gulati is the one derived on women — so it's the honest answer to "what's my max heart rate?" if you're a woman.
Gulati et al. (2010) derived max HR = 206 − 0.88 × age on a large women's cohort. The familiar "220 − age" was never built on women and reads a few beats high for them — enough to push your training zones too hard. WIMSTA uses Gulati as the anchor for women, and shows it beside eight other formulas as a range.
At 45, "220 − age" reads 9 bpm higher than Gulati. Train off the universal number and your zones sit too high — you push harder than the target. Gulati was built on a women's cohort precisely because 220 − age fits women worst. Men should use Tanaka instead (Gulati is women-only). The full calculator shows all nine formulas as a range.
Why "220 − age" fails women
"220 − age" is a back-of-envelope rule with a spread of ±10–12 bpm, and its data was mostly men. Applied to women it overestimates max HR, so every zone derived from it sits too high — you think you're in an easy aerobic zone while you're actually working harder. For endurance training, where the easy zones do the work, that bias quietly undermines the plan.
Gulati was built to fix exactly this — a women's cohort, validated against a symptom-limited stress test. It's still a population estimate (any single prediction carries ±10 bpm), which is why we show it inside a range, not as one magic number.
Best for
Women wanting a max-HR estimate and training zones that aren't biased high by a men-derived rule.
Not for
Men (use Tanaka). And no formula replaces a measured max from a supervised test — every prediction is ±10 bpm.
One number is a guess. See the range — and your zones.
The calculator runs Gulati beside eight more formulas, shows the honest range, and turns your anchor into five training zones (HRmax, Karvonen and threshold).
Open the heart-rate calculatorGulati et al. (2010). Circulation 122(2):130–137 — DOI. Derived on women's cohort, n ≈ 5,437, validated against symptom-limited stress test. Implementation covered by our test suite.
FAQ
What is the max heart rate formula for women?
The Gulati formula: maximum heart rate = 206 − 0.88 × age. It was derived specifically on a large women's cohort (Gulati et al., 2010), unlike the familiar "220 − age", which was based mostly on men and tends to overestimate women's max heart rate.
Why is 220 − age wrong for women?
"220 − age" is a rough rule with a spread of ±10–12 bpm, and it was never derived on women. For women it reads a few beats too high — so training zones built from it sit too high, and you end up working harder than the zone intends. Gulati corrects that bias.
How different are Gulati and 220 − age?
The gap grows with age. At 30 it's about 3 bpm; at 55–60 it's 6–8 bpm. That's enough to shift every training zone up by several beats, which matters most for easy/aerobic zones where a few beats change the effort.
Does Gulati apply to men?
No — it was derived on women. Men are better served by Tanaka (208 − 0.7 × age). WIMSTA uses Gulati as the anchor for women and Tanaka for men, and shows all nine formulas as a range either way.
How every formula is sourced: the method page.