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Intensity Minutes

cjstinson
over 7 years ago
I have a Garmin 935. For times activities (runs and walks) it works fine. Each of these activities also appear under Intensity Minutes. There are however problems.
1. On days when there was no activity I still get a high intensity minute figure. This has happened twice in the past two weeks.
2. The bar graph on intensity minutes bears no relationship to the duration of the activity
3. the weekly total on intensity minutes does not match (or come close to) the sum of the activities for the week.

Is this a known bug?

I assume by daily steps are not meant to appear under intensity minutes. Can somebody confirm that. Most days I walk about 14,000 steps but as a general rule there is only an intensity minute reading on days when I have a timed activity.

Thanks
Cliff
  • 0 over 7 years ago
    This is not a bug. You do not understand how intensity minutes work. Please read the manual or look for other threads discussing intensity minutes on this forum.
  • 0 over 7 years ago
    Hi TMK2,
    Thanks for your reply. Perhaps you can assist me in understanding. I've read the manual and after searching the forum, I see I'm not alone in my confusion. I have now discovered how to see my Move IQ events but even with these can find no relationship between my activity and my Intensity Minutes.

    Today I have thee walks:
    - The first was a recorded activity of 9.23 km taking 1 hour 33 minutes
    - The second was a 14 minute walk to the shop which was picked up as a Move IQ Event
    - The third was a 59 minutes walk, also picked up as a Move IQ Event.

    Of these three only the 14 minute walk appears under my intensity minutes.

    I can give many other examples but this illustrates the problem. Can you offer an explanation as to why only the one of these walks (the shortest) appears and the other two don't. All were at the same pace.

    Thanks
    Cliff
  • 0 over 7 years ago
    There is no relationship between registered activites (either manual or Move IQ) and intensity minutes.

    The simplified explanation is:
    Whenever your heart rate exceeds a certain level for longer than 10 minutes (regardless of whether you're doing an actual activity or not) the watch starts accumulating intensity minutes. Raise your heart rate even further and the watch starts doubling intensity minutes. This is why intensity minutes almost never match time spent in activities.
  • 0 over 7 years ago
    Again thank you and please understand I am not debating the point; merely trying to understand.

    The 14 minute walk was a casual saunter to the shops to buy the Sunday morning paper. It showed up as intensity minutes. The 9.23 km walk was at a brisk pace over hilly terrain but failed to register. All four Mondays included a 15 minute up-hill walk from a train station to my work. On other mornings this counted as moderate or even intense exercise, but on Mondays it does not register. I have looked at the heart rates and can see no difference between the Mondays and other days. Do you have a heart rate or a percentage of maximum at which the levels are recognised?

    Any assistance you can provide on understanding how this is computed will be appreciated.

    Thanks
    Cliff

  • 0 over 7 years ago
    I don't know the details, because I do not care that much about intensity minutes, but I believe that intensity minutes recognition is based on your defined HR zones. If you don't have them set up correctly, then you might get strange results.

    But why some of your intensive walks register as intensity minutes and others don't? Sorry, I don't know, especially without looking at the data. Maybe it's a matter of the OHR unreliability or maybe there is some bug after all.
  • 0 over 7 years ago
    Some Garmin watches without an OHR also count intensity minutes. I guess that those watches use accelerometer data to decide on the user's level of activity.

    So could it be that the OHR equipped watches use a combination of OHR data and accelerometer data when they count intensity minutes?
  • 0 over 7 years ago
    Even those with OHR built-in do count intensity minutes when the OHR is off whenever they detect something resembling a brisk walk, but in that case only single intensity minutes are counted no matter how hard the real effort.