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Since around 2/11/2025, my activities frequently don't even show Intensity Minutes in Connect

9036334
4 months ago

I have a new-ish fenix 8 watch, but that was purchased a couple of weeks before this started happening.  Since around 2/11/2025, my activities most often don't even have an "Intensity Minutes" section under Stats in Garmin Connect.  It's just not there.  These activities currently (because it's winter here in Michigan, USA) come entirely from the fenix 8 watch (for walks, hikes, and workouts) and from the Tacx Training app on my gaming laptop.  There hasn't been a single activity tracked on my watch since that date that has shown Intensity Minutes, but with trainer rides, it's hit or miss.  Some do, some don't.  Again, it's not that the Intensity Minutes are 0, it's that that section of data under Stats simply isn't present.

I've tried rebooting the fenix 8 and my phone, and I've checked for updates for the fenix 8 and the Garmin Connect app.  There are none.  I've also gone through all the settings I can find that could related to this on both the watch itself and in Garmin Connect (although I still keep wondering if I'm missing something somewhere).

And just because I see this response in the forums when other people have brought up this issue: Yes, I know that the Intensity Minutes reset to zero every week, and I know they depend on my activity levels.  I've been using the Garmin ecosystem for years.  Even on walks, I typically get some Intensity Minutes, especially in the winter when my fitness levels drop.  I always get plenty of Intensity Minutes on trainer rides and during my workouts (when things are working correctly), so something is definitely broken.

I've also opened a case with Garmin, but I'm trying to cover all my options.  I rely on this feature quite a bit.

  • 0 4 months ago

    There is a similar thread at https://forums.garmin.com/outdoor-recreation/outdoor-recreation/f/fenix-8-series/405131/intensity-minutes-reported-dropped-off-a-cliff/1905479#1905479 Please follow the instructions given there, and post the requested data, perhaps we can see what's wrong.

  • 0 4 months ago in reply to trux

    Thanks.  I looked at that one, but it doesn't sound like the same thing.  In that case, the Intensity Minutes section is still there, it's just they're not getting the same IMs they're expecting.  In my case, that section of my activity reports is simply not there at all.  I did look at my RHR graph as mentioned in that post, but it hasn't changed significantly over that time.

  • 0 4 months ago in reply to 9036334

    If there are no Intensity Minutes, there will be no IM section (it won't show 0 minutes), so it still may be the same case. If you post the requested data, we can perhaps tell better.

  • 0 4 months ago in reply to trux

    That must be a change in behavior, because I've had dog walking activities in summer when I'm at peak fitness where the section was present but I got no IMs at all because my HR never rose to that level. 

    I've looked at my automatically determined max HR in the last year in the web interface, and it seems to be all over the place.  I may have to turn that off and set it manually.  It's been as high as 188 and as low as 160.  I've hit low 170s during harder rides, so I know 160 isn't right, and 188 seems too high.  I'm going to try pasting activity links here, but will they work?  I thought I had to share out that kind of data.

    Here's an activity that had IMs:

    https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/18224234717

    Here's an activity without IMs:

    https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/18386807921

    Looking at these (and another one where I got no IMs), it seems like my daily HR graph isn't showing the higher HR that I logged during the activities.  That makes me wonder if the HR used for IMs is coming from somewhere else?  I would have thought it would have just come from the activity HR numbers.

  • 0 4 months ago in reply to 9036334
    9036334 said:
    Here's an activity that had IMs:
    9036334 said:
    Here's an activity without IMs:

    Those activities are private, you'd have to unlock them. However, even without seeing the activity details, the all-day HR graphs show rather clearly the reason - the HR during the second activity is pretty low (not even reaching the green HR zone), in comparison with the first one. You'd need a bit higher effort for getting some intensity minutes.

       

  • 0 4 months ago in reply to 9036334

    Wow, I just looked at the Max HR graph for the last 7 days, and it's really off. It's as low as 107bpm.  This must not be a graph of my current Max HR setting, but how high my HR got during that day.  Makes more sense, I guess.  Still, I set my max HR in both my watch and my Edge 1050 to 177bpm, which I think should be reasonably accurate from what I've seen.  Definitely better than the automatically-determined 185bpm that it was set to before I changed it.  I think if I hit 185 (and I'm 55 years old), I'd probably die.  Slight smile

  • 0 4 months ago in reply to trux

    That's what I mentioned--those daily graph HR numbers are wrong.  You can't see the activity data, but the actual HR recorded during that ride was WAY higher than that (I think I got into the 150s on that one).  I don't understand why the daily HR graph wouldn't have the right data.  Shouldn't that come from the same source (which was my Garmin chest strap HR monitor)? Maybe that's the source of the break that occurred somewhere around Feb. 11?  Something acute clearly happened around that date that changed this behavior.  I know I didn't suddenly and instantly become far more fit.  Maybe it's getting the HR for that daily graph from my watch, which didn't keep up?  Seems odd to me.  I still haven't heard anything from Garmin support, but I do seem to remember getting an update to my fenix 8 around that date.

  • 0 4 months ago in reply to 9036334

    Today's lunch walk with our dog also shows no IMs, even though my HR (strangely) got up to 124bpm.  Hopefully I'll hear from support.

  • 0 4 months ago in reply to 9036334
    9036334 said:
    You can't see the activity data,

    If you change the privacy of the activity to Everyone, we can have a look.

  • 0 3 months ago

    I just wanted to post an update for anyone looking at this in the future.  That setting for using HR zones for intensity minutes did somehow get turned on on my fenix 8.  It wasn't me--I had forgotten that setting was even a thing, and there's no way I would have set my watch to use zone 3 for moderate and zone 4 for vigorous intensity minutes.  My goal with IMs is to have them roughly match the American Heart Association's "Heart Points" used by Google Fit.  That was working fine on the default IM setting.  Google Fit and Garmin Connect were usually pretty close to each other every week.  After putting the setting back to not use HR zones, I did an indoor trainer ride after work yesterday, and things are back to normal.

    support.garmin.com/.../