Does anyone understand how does it work and what insights can we get from it?
Sometimes it looks like is "always on" but other times when I access it, it asks me to wait 30 seconds "keeping still", and sometimes gives me result "Check Watch Fit"...
Basically, it uses the On-wrist heart rate monitor (HRM) to measure your Heart Rate Variability (HRV) throughout the day, when you're not active and when your watch is stable enough to get an accurate HRV reading. Whether or not your HRV is low or high determines if you are in a state of 'No', 'Low', 'Medium' or 'High' stress level - these levels arbitrarily determined by First Beat, the company that designs the analytics for Garmin, which are nonetheless informative IMO.
High levels of stress are not necessarily bad, but a lack of recovery or a too-consistently high stress level (i.e. low HRV) could definitely be detrimental to health/fitness.
From a physiological perspective (I study stress in my research) it completely makes sense. There is indeed a relationship between HRV and stress levels. And there is indeed a relationship between chronic stress and health (or lack thereof). The only question I'd have is whether or not the on-wrist HRM is reliable enough to read HRV, which I don't see why they would release this technology if it were not reasonably accurate. Other companies (Apple, for example) will/or currently have similar technologies.
Definitely a useful metric IMO. One I am very excited to see charted over a training cycle to see if matches whether I actually 'feel' recovered!
Is the daily stress widget in the web interface working for you? Mine says I don't own any device that supports this, the widget is running fine on the watch.
I have firmware 6.00 installed on my Quatix 5 Saphire but I'm unable to add the all day stress widget. It is not listed after I select "Add Widget". Is the widget only available to the fenix 5 series and not the Quatix?
I have firmware 6.00 installed on my Quatix 5 Saphire but I'm unable to add the all day stress widget. It is not listed after I select "Add Widget". Is the widget only available to the fenix 5 series and not the Quatix?
I don't think the Stress features was added to Quatix
Basically, it uses the On-wrist heart rate monitor (HRM) to measure your Heart Rate Variability (HRV) throughout the day, when you're not active and when your watch is stable enough to get an accurate HRV reading. Whether or not your HRV is low or high determines if you are in a state of 'No', 'Low', 'Medium' or 'High' stress level - these levels arbitrarily determined by First Beat, the company that designs the analytics for Garmin, which are nonetheless informative IMO.
High levels of stress are not necessarily bad, but a lack of recovery or a too-consistently high stress level (i.e. low HRV) could definitely be detrimental to health/fitness. ....
I get it... i just don't get is why the reading fails sometimes (many times actually) even though i'm not moving and the watch is able to measure HR... when it says: Check Watch fit. If the algorithm uses HR values, and the watch is measuring HR, why can the stress app "calculate" the Stress level value?
I've read somewhere that i need to loosen the watch strap to get better readings, which i did and in fact improved the readings, but its not a stable reading.. anyone else with this "issue"?
Is the daily stress widget in the web interface working for you? Mine says I don't own any device that supports this, the widget is running fine on the watch.
It seems they fixed it already... now its working for me.
In case anyone is interested, here's an interview I did recently with Tero Myllymaki, who heads Firstbeat's physiology team, about this new feature specifically.
He explains a little about the science behind the analysis and what folks can expect from it. In a nutshell, technology is finally starting to catch up to the science.
Enjoy.
Awesome. Thank you, HermanB .
I get it... i just don't get is why the reading fails sometimes (many times actually) even though i'm not moving and the watch is able to measure HR... when it says: Check Watch fit. If the algorithm uses HR values, and the watch is measuring HR, why can the stress app "calculate" the Stress level value?
I've read somewhere that i need to loosen the watch strap to get better readings, which i did and in fact improved the readings, but its not a stable reading.. anyone else with this "issue"?
@bchccc I see what you're saying - I don't know about the specifics of that 'Check Watch Fit' prompt, but what I will say is that just because it can read your Heart Rate doesn't necessarily mean it can read your Heart Rate Variability (which is what is used for this All Day Stress Feature). The only thing I could think would be that it needs a particular fit (doesn't have to be perfect, just good enough) to be able to read your Heart Rate and have enough fidelity to read your HRV). I do not have my F5 particularly loose or tight and have All-Day Stress readings pretty much throughout the day - not every minute throughout the day, but enough to see trends.
