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Activity workouts not counted towards intensity minutes, but random small daily activities do.

About a week ago my Indoor Rowing workouts stopped counting towards intensity minutes. I complete the workout, the watch syncs with the Garmin Connect app (Pixel 8 Pro), I see the activity at the top of the page in the app and the charts inside the activity tab show good effort with average HR around 150, times in Zone 3 = 4 min, Zone 4 = 10 min, Zone 5 = 7 min. Workouts usually last about 20 min. Yet none of it is counted towards the Intensity minutes any longer. When I click on the Intensity minutes tab there used to be a small green icon along the time axis displaying my activity at the certain time and that icon is not showing any longer, but if I go to any other tab ex: Stress or Body Battery, the small green activity icon is showing at the exact time I did the activity.  

However Intensity Minutes do still increase randomly during the day, let's say I play a soccer game with my kids. The watch will recognize the running activity and I will receive some Intensity Minutes credit from it. 

I've checked the Heart Rate Zones (185BPM Max) to make sure they match my fitness level, my activity class is set to 7, 

Primary wearable: Fenix 5X, Indoor Rowing (started activity manually, stopped and saved manually). 

I also have Vivosmart 5 I wear at night for sleep tracking. 

I've searched the internet but had no luck in finding a solution. I restarted and hard reset both devices. I logged out and back in to the app. 

Thank you in advance. 

  • It is explained here How Are Intensity Minutes Earned? | Garmin Customer Support

    In brief: by default, it is the ratio of the HR from the all-day graph (not from the activity!) to the 7 days average Resting HR that counts. Additionally, on Fenix 5, the HR must be elevated above the threshold for minimally 10 continuous minutes, for the time to be counted.

  • Thanks for the reply. I'm still confused about it not working as it is described on the website. I watched the short video they have posted, but still everything makes sense until I complete my workout and then nothing works as expected. 

    Quick recap of yesterday:  I did a 24 min tough Indoor Rowing workout in the morning. My heart rate was in Zones 4 and 5 for 15 minutes, which takes care of the 10 minute threshold for my Fenix 5x watch. Once I complete the workout, I stop and save the activity, which syncs to my phone right away. My phone dings and lets me know everything is uploaded. I see the workout, all metrics are good, yet no increase for the intensity minutes, not even one! I open the Intensity Minutes tab and the workout within the tab is not showing up at all. It's supposed to show below the Daily Timeline chart. 

    Later that day I'm running around the field with my kids, nothing intense, just having fun kicking the ball around for a couple of hours. I get home and the watch recorded 100 min of moderate Intensity Minutes. Inside the Intensity Minutes tab below the Daily Timeline nothing shows. Just the Intensity Minutes increase. 

    Today I did some testing using my Vivosmart 5:

    First: I complete a 15 min workout with only Fenix 5x. I make sure my heart rate is in Zones 3 and 4 for at least 10 min. After I'm done, I open the app the workout uploads and it shows on the main page at the top. Next, I open the Intensity Minutes tab and there seems to be no record of the workout I've just done. It's supposed to show below the Daily Timeline chart. Therefore nothing counted towards Intensity Minutes. 

    I take a 5 min break.

    Second: I complete a 4 min workout with both my Fenix 5x and Vivosmart 5. Afterwards at the top of the main page in the app two separate workouts show with exact same statistics, as expected. Suddenly my Intensity Minutes increase based on the upload from Vivosmart 5, not Fenix 5x (I was able to verify which upload counted towards Intensity Minutes based on the timeline). Once I click on the Intensity Minutes tab, BOTH workouts of 4 min show below the Daily Timeline chart. Still no sign of the first 15 min workout I did earlier.

    What happened to my first workout? Why did the algorithm not count it towards Intensity Minutes? Why did the algorithm suddenly decide to upload the second workout from Fenix 5x in the Intensity minutes?

    I'm just completely lost as to what's going on here. It seems that Fenix 5x is just not working with Intensity Minutes. 

  • Please post screenshots of the all-day HR screen for given day (including the graph and the Resting HR), and also the full graph of Intensity Minutes of the same day. Another screenshot with the settings for Intensity Minutes would be also helpful. And please share a link to the activity recorded with Fenix 5.

  • Here are the screenshots from my phone. I'm not sure how to share my workout so I just took a couple of screenshots showing the stats (screenshot 4 & 5). If you notice in the HR screenshot it displays 3 workouts below the chart, but in the Intensity Minutes screenshot there are only two, which is the second workout where I wore both Fenix and the Vivosmart together. The last screenshot is my main page just to show everything syncs to my phone. 

    HR

    Again, I appreciate your help. If this is believed to be only my problem and not something other people are experiencing, I'm completely OK with you disregarding this and moving on to more important things. I understand Fenix 5 is an older watch and I'm probably due for an upgrade. 

  • I cannot see quite well the HR on the first screenshot during those activities. Please zoom it on the section with activities (tap, hold, and move the finger to zoom the selected section), and make another screenshot of the zoomed section. Also please share a link (not a screenshot!) to the F5 activity.

  • .. and also please go to the User Settings on the Fenix 5 device, and check whether the Resting HR value there is also around 57 bpm, or whether it is set differently.

  • I double checked RHR on the device and it's set to 57bpm under User Profile/Heart Rate in Settings. 

    Here's the zoomed in HR chart from this morning.

    Workout: https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/14051746885

  • Yes, the all-day HR curve looks like meeting the criteria for the IMs, so I do not know why there were none. Perhaps the fact that you use a mixture of devices of different generations, the old F5 not supporting the Unified Training Status, may play a role, although theoretically it should not. I recommend reaching out to Garmin's Product Support and have them look at it.

  • Thank you! I'll reach out to them and see what they say.