I have been training with a heart rate monitor for 20 years and I noticed that my heart rate has always been a little higher than most. I was a little scared when I saw 200 bpm during the ramp test yesterday. I never reach that high during my workouts. By the way, I’m 39. The old guideline 220 - age does not apply to me! At what point does it become dangerous for my health?
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- Not a fun answer, but seeing a doctor is your best bet.
Way too many variables (data accuracy for one) to even make a suggestion.
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220 - age simply isn’t accurate for athletes. I wouldn’t be worried. I am 45 years and I have just stopped hitting 200bpm regularly and my mate,
the same age (+6 months), regularly sees 200-202bpm. We are all different though other folk will see other max’s so associating directly to age doesn’t work.
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I am 41 and have seen 191 on the bike and 202 running… so not unusually high.
That said… since you have been using HRM for years, you may want to consult your doctor if it persist.
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51 here and can hit 194 on a ramp test. Probably higher if I was running. Don’t worry about it.
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48 years old and with a max heart rate around 194 indoors.
The 220 - age simply doesn’t work for me either. Just an average over a large number of people.
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at 25 I was seeing 207-210 on the hot club rides,…
at 50 I am still seeing 5 over 220-age inside on trainer……
guess we are all “above average” compared to couch surfers…
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Never, at least as long as you’re in a normal sinus rhythm.
Well, that’s not quite true - we’re all at greater risk when exercising than at rest, and the harder you go, the greater the risk is likely to be. However, that’s not tied directly to your absolute HR.
If anything, endurance training tends to reduce maximal HR.
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Being an athlete doesn’t make that ROT less accurate.
Be whatever you want to be; the generic formula doesn’t work for a large number of people 
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This is true. However, being an athlete has no bearing on the issue whatsoever.
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It’s called standard deviation. 220-age is a population average - same as “the average person wears size 9 shoes”. That’s no help when it comes to buy shoes for a specific individual. Nor is 220-age useful to evaluate max HR for a specific individual. And I’m far from convinced that endurance athletes have in average a higher HRMax than the rest of the population. They certainly are more aware of their HRMax - the average person does not often get near that point.
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37 years old - regularly hit max HR of 212 during ramp test. I have had a check up at a kardiologist before I started racing - nothing to worry about. Guess my heart is just a little smaller than average.
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Yes, basically it doesn’t fit those that vary from the mean. In simple terms it doesn’t fit everyone, everyone is not the mean.
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I’m 51 (wait what, when did that happen) and can get to just shy of 200, have medical conditions so checked out regular
The heart is a muscle, and different people have different sized muscles, so they beat at different speeds, just like people with different leg muscles have different cadence (I know thats not entirely true, but does sort of get the point across)
I’m not a doctor, so if you have a concern get yourself checked out, but I would just ask, if you hadn’t had a heart rate monitor on would you have known/be worried, people with a problem probably would have
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Same here, 45 and max HR >200. Not much lower than my FTP! 
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That’s the correct concept, but in purely technical terms it’s not the standard deviation. I think the technically correct term may be prediction error. Standard deviation is a measure of the variance of some variable, not a prediction. So, the actual max heart rates of, say, 40 year olds have a standard deviation. The predicted max HRs from the formula do not, because they’re all 180.
To the OP’s concern, I’m not a doctor, but assuming normal health and no genetic abnormalities, I don’t think you can exceed your own actual maximum HR. So, never mind your predicted max HR, you yourself have an actual max HR, and it may be above or below your predicted max HR. I think your body will simply not be physically able to push above your max HR (again, assume normal health, no undiscovered cardiac conditions). I don’t think there’s any contraindication for healthy adults to regularly hit a high percentage of their actual max HR - aside from overtraining, anyway.
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As noted above, a checkup can’t hurt, but it seems unlikely there is a serious issue here if the only presentation is a higher than statistically average max HR. Get your mind put at rest by a professional, then crack on.
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If 220 - age were a regression equation, then the imprecision could be expressed as the standard error of the estimate. But, it’s just a ROT.
207 - 0.7 x age is a regression equation, which if I recall correctly has an SEE of about 11 bpm.
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