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High heart rate not the same as max heart rate from activity.

Hi All,

live just noticed in the Garmin connect app that my high heart rate was showing as 170 beats per minute but for the same day I did an activity and it lists my max heart rate as 183 beats per minute. Does anyone know where the high heart rate comes from? I’m assuming it’s the highest my heart rate has been while not in an activity which if so would just mean the optical heart rate sensor in my watch has stuffed up at some point as there’s know way I’d hit 170 without working pretty hard.

  • It comes from the different sampling rate in the daily data (2 minutes) and in the Activity file (up to 1s). Hence the daily data is "smoothed" and ignores some peaks.

  • Well, it can't be too difficult for the Connect app to have a brief look at the activity data and display the highest heart rate therein as the highest heart rate of the day in the daily data.

    It is just so annoying that the highest heart rate in the daily data doesn't display the true highest heart rate of the day!

  • I'd tell it is more or less intentional. The High HR is rather unimportant, and some accidental high peaks in the HR also often occur due to a malfunction of the HRM. So the averaging over longer samples throughout the day makes some sense.

    What is more important is the Max HR, which is no way the same as the High HR. You have to be able to sustain the Max HR for several tens of seconds. Besides that, the Max HR is a rather stable value, not increasing with your fitness. It practically only decreases with the age, as the metabolism slows down. The best way to find your Max HR is not by checking your activities for the highest peak, but by conducing a Max HR test once each (couple of) year(s).