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What is "vigorous"

Former Member
Former Member over 7 years ago
Can anybody explain what Garmin means by "vigorous" in terms of "intensity minutes?" For that matter, I'm not sure it's clear what "intensity minutes" are, either.

I just went for a run for 45 minutes, and ten minutes of that was reported as "vigorous" and 35 as "moderate." The activity chart shows that my HR was between 80% and 95% of max for the entire duration, and all in HR "Zone 5", which I take to be the most intensive.

There is nothing I can discern in the results that divide the 45-minute period into "moderate" and "vigorous" sections -- just constant pace, constant high heart rate.

Has Garmin ever actually explained, with numbers we can verify, how these different kinds of "intensity minutes" are calculated? It's a topic that seems to be discussed frequently on this forum, but there seems to be no hard data.

I don't really care -- but with "intensity minutes" occupying such a prominent place in the Garmin Connect displays, it would be good to know that it actually meant something.

  • 0 over 7 years ago
    What is "moderate"? I've been brisk walking for 4-5 miles at 65+ percent of max HR but none of those minutes are marked as moderate. Using old school Cooper aerobics would give a bunch of aerobic points for these walks. From the Vivoactive 3 user guide:


    Intensity Minutes

    To improve your health, organizations such as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Heart Association[SUP]®[/SUP], and the World Health Organization, recommend at least 150 minutes per week of moderate intensity activity, such as brisk walking, or 75 minutes per week of vigorous intensity activity, such as running.
    The device monitors your activity intensity and tracks your time spent participating in moderate to vigorous intensity activities (heart rate data is required to quantify vigorous intensity). You can work toward achieving your weekly intensity minutes goal by participating in at least 10 consecutive minutes of moderate to vigorous intensity activities. The device adds the amount of moderate activity minutes with the amount of vigorous activity minutes. Your total vigorous intensity minutes are doubled when added.

  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 7 years ago
    It's just a meaningless measure, for me at least. Because "vigorous" activity counts for twice as much, and there is no way of knowing what counts as "vigorous" in terms of things the device can measure, it's just a random number.

    For me, it's much more useful to know how much time I spend in the various heart rate zones, and that information is recorded, although it takes a bit of effort to dig it out.

    I would be happier if I could just banish the meaningless "intensity minutes" measure from all the displays -- it just gets in the way and doesn't convey any useful information.

    Incidentally, in a different thread somebody suggested that the problem might be short drop-outs in the heart-rate sensor. The "intensity" data has to be continuous, so a drop-out of a few seconds every five minutes might prevent the exercise being counted, even if the overall heart-rate looked OK.
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 7 years ago
    [h=1]Earning Intensity Minutes[/h] Your Forerunner[SUP]®[/SUP] device calculates intensity minutes by comparing your heart rate data during an activity to your average resting heart rate. If heart rate is turned off, the device calculates moderate intensity minutes by analyzing your steps per minute.
    • Start a timed activity for the most accurate calculation of intensity minutes.
    • Exercise for at least 10 consecutive minutes at a moderate or vigorous intensity level.

    This is from the FR935 manual, but I suspect it would be the same across all Garmin devices. Anyway, as you stated above, a loss of HR data (very common if using the oHRM) will change the calculations. Because your average RHR changes, so will your earned intensity minutes. My RHR is 49. When I'm coming down with an illness it will increase by 8-10 bpm. I'll usually have a few beers on Friday or Saturday night after a long week at work. Just having 4 beers (far from being intoxicated) increases my RHR 7-8 bpm that evening. So, basically depending on what day of the week it is and what my average RHR is at that time changes what IM I get even though I may be working out in the same HR zone for the same duration. All thing's being equal, it's just a number Garmin uses and I think it's very lenient. I've changed my weekly goal to 450 mins just as a personal goal. Bottom line is take the Garmin readings with a grain of salt. You know your body better than anyone else and you'll know when your in the right zone.
  • 0 over 5 years ago

    I’ve been using the forerunner 235 for months, regularly and for sustained periods at 85-90% of MHR, often dbl or more the 150min wkly intensity min std, and have NEVER seen a sgl minute recorded on the “vigorous” line.  The oHRM does flake out regularly, as does the step counter at high incline angles on a treadmill (and sometimes when it just feels like it).  Watch just not reliable for workouts, even just walking, but ok for keeping time I guess...

  • 0 over 5 years ago in reply to 3099820
    3099820 said:
    and have NEVER seen a sgl minute recorded on the “vigorous” line

    That's normal, since the vigorous minutes are not shown separately on GC Web. They simply add to the total number of intensity minutes, just multiplied by two. Once added, AFAIK, you won't see anywhere in Garmin Connect Web how many of the total intensity minutes were earned in the simple (moderate) way, and how many of them in the doubled (vigorous) mode. You can perhaps see that values on Garmin Connect Mobile, but it may depend on the device you use. Some of them may not keep the values separately.

  • 0 over 5 years ago in reply to trux

    ‘Talking about the app on my iPhone, so I presume we’re talking about GC “Mobile”.  So what’s the purpose of the display line at all then?  Just some kind of informational thing? Simply a fixed annotation?  Why the “blanks”/hyphens then (suggesting data will appear there)?

  • 0 over 5 years ago in reply to 3099820
    3099820 said:
    ‘Talking about the app on my iPhone, so I presume we’re talking about GC “Mobile”.

    You are actually posting to the Garmin Connect Web forum, not to the forum for GC Mobile iOS, so I assumed we spoke about GC Web. On GC Web, there is only one value. On GC Mobile Android, there are indeed both values and they work all right for me. If it is not your case, there are several possibilities:

    1. Your device does not record vigorous minutes separately
    2. You did not make any vigorous minutes (anaerobic effort)
    3. Your HR sensor does not work
    4. Your HR zones are defined too high, or your daily average HR is too high
    5. Perhaps the iOS version does not work in the same way as the Android version does, and it does not show the vigorous minutes (other iOS users could easily deny it, if it works for them too, like for me on the Android)

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to 3099820

    I know this is a bit late but I've just found my vigorous minutes settings on my watch. They were set to auto. And in 6 months I've never had a vigorous minute recorded. So I set vigorous to any exercise that puts me in zone 5 of my heart rate. 

  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 4 years ago in reply to leeoliver1982

    Can I ask where you found this setting? 

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to Former Member

    I have looked into this a lot recently. What I found, is that the (more) recent watches like the Forerunner 245 and the Garmin Fenix 6 series allow you to configure per HR zone if minutes will be counted as vigorous or not.

    In my opinion that is a hugely important feature, because it will give you full control:

    • You can configure the HR zones in a way that makes sense to you (maybe after doing some sort of test)
    • And then specify which of these zones feel "vigorous" to you.
    • I imagine that the setting will also be available for the HR zones that are configured for individual sports. And that also makes a lot of sense to me, because vigorous on a bike is different for me than vigorous while running.

    Anyway, I will continue to make this point as much as possible, because I feel this is a simple software change that should also be made available (retro-actively) for older watches like the Fenix 5 series that I use. I hope Garmin will listen, because I think spending 800 euros or dollars just for this software feature is crazy.

    Garmin Please?