AI Tutor
Place your hand gently over your chest right now. Can you feel that steady thump-thump inside?
Every time your heart squeezes, it pushes blood through tubes in your body called arteries. You can feel this tiny wave of blood as a pulse, and counting these beats tells us your heart rate in beats per minute, or bpm.
How do you find your pulse without a stethoscope? Let's check the two easiest spots.

Finding Your Pulse

You can find your pulse on your wrist just below your thumb, or on your neck right beside your windpipe. Always use the tips of your index and middle fingers, pressing lightly until you feel a soft tap.
Never use your thumb to check a pulse! Your thumb has its own tiny heartbeat artery inside it, which means you might accidentally count your thumb's pulse instead of your wrist's.
Now that your fingers are on the beat, how do we count the beats accurately?

Counting Your Resting Heart Rate

Your resting heart rate is the speed of your heart when you are calm, sitting down, and relaxed. For kids ages 8 to 9, a normal resting rate is usually between 70 and 110 bpm.
You can count every beat for a full 60 seconds on a timer. Or you can count beats for 15 seconds and multiply by 4, since 15×4=6015 \times 4 = 60 seconds.
What happens to those steady beats the moment you jump up and start sprinting?