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Garmin Connect inaccurately predicting maximum heart rate ?

Former Member over 9 years ago

I am 60 years old and male. The rough guide for maximum heart rate of 220 minus age gives a predicted maximum heart rate of 160. The other formulae for maximum heart rates [ 208 - 0.7[age] ] etc differ only by one or two beats. In practice my maximum recorded heart rate ever since using connect is 168. However Garmin Connect gives me a predicted maximum of 185 which doesn't seem to make sense. That would make me 35 years old , very nice to think so but surely very inaccurate. My profile details are all accurate with regard to age and gender. Can anyone help me explain and correct this somehow.
Thanks in advance.

0 JSRUNNER_ over 9 years ago

Not sure what you mean by predicted MHR from connect. Unless you override the settings you will just get generic values.

Both the formulae you have quoted are worse than useless for training as they also are generic.

You need ideally to do a max HR test in a lab or using a treadmill method - if you google it you can find various tests.

Failing that your Max HR in your best hard 5K effort will be some indicator.

If you have seen 168 in connect then unless that was absolute flat out effort over 3 or 4 minutes after full warm up and tempo pace before that then your MHR is likely to be a bit above that.

I also am just about to turn 60 the maximum HR I have seen in connect is 177 in a hard 5K race where I set a PB - my MHR is set to 185 and I suspect that is probably about right so it may well be higher than you think - I certainly wasn't about to pass out at the end of that run so I almost certainly wasn't at MHR

0 Former Member over 9 years ago

Garmin connect records my heart rates and will give these expressed as a rate or a percentsage of the maximum heart rate. Thus it has done its own calculaton of what my MHR should be. It is also recorded in the my profile page under training zones this is not a calculation I have made but one generated by Garmin connect. I realise I can overide this but was puzzled by how Garmin connect arrived at a MHR for a 60 year old male.

0 JSRUNNER_ over 9 years ago

I'm not sure it bothers I think it defaults regardless of gender or age