Max HR Auto Detection

Former Member over 5 years ago

Note I have updated this question and added screenshots in the reply below.

I have a question about Max HR. I have a Fenix 5. My Max HR was set to 174, as a starting value 220-age and has been so for about 9 months. Recently it has gone up to 185. I believe this is too high as I have only once achieved 173. There have been 4 activities where there has been a spike, to 200+, clearly anomalies, these only show up in Garmin Connect App, they are not there in GC web.

I'd like to know how to find out exactly when my Max HR went up. Can you help? Can I see this in any of the apps or by examining backup .fit files?

I'd also like to know whether Garmin Max HR is absolute Max.. which nobody should be able to actually reach, or is it the Max HR you should be able to push yourself to when exercising at maximum intensity? This will help me know what to manually reset it to.

I'd also like to know why this happened and how i can get the best estimate of my max HR.

My VO2Max is now 63, I think it should be more like 60.

0 Former Member over 5 years ago

Update.. I decided to reset my max HR manually to 176 (up slightly from the 174). I ran and my VO2Max did not change. I investigated the HR zones and in Garmin Connect on the web, I could see that there were two sets of zones, one for running and one default. The running zones were still set to the high Max HR zones so I deleted the running zones and reset the default ones to my reflect my 176 Max HR. Synced. I ran again today and my VO2Max did reduce by 1 to 62. But the activity did not sync properly, headline data and laps look ok but the pace, HR and dynamics charts are corrupted. I had to fix the .fit file to get it to manually upload to Strava because the auto sync failed.

I always wear a Garmin HR strap btw.

Please help Garmin!

Tried to attach the fit file but could not.