Resting hr

For correct RHR you should wear your watch to sleep.

For correct RHR you should wear your watch to sleep.

Do you know it is correct so?

That's how garmin recommends to do it. Whether it gives medically correct results - I do not know.

First of all:
The (Wikipedia) definition of Resting Heart Rate (RHR) is "the heart rate when a person is awake and has not been subject to any recent exertion or stimulation, such as stress or surprise".

Few things to note:
1. the resting heart rate during sleep does not fit the definition (because RHR is when you are awake);
2. the resting heart rate during sleep as Garmin determines it is the 'lowest 4-hour average' measured during your sleep (according to their documentation). Garmin is the only one doing it this way, I have not found any other/scientific references to determining your resting heart rate that way;
3. the resting heart rate during the day is the 'lowest 1-minute average' (according to the Garmin documentation). Except: it is not. Since firmware v7 or v8 there has been a big difference between the 'lowest 1-min average' (or actually: 2-min average, as that is what all the Garmin Connect graphs show you) and the RHR value that Garmin actually records.
4. If you wear your watch during day ánd night, Garmin will prioritize the sleeping heart rate (e.g. the lowest 4-hour average) and will (thus) store your RHR as measured in your sleep.

Which one is more accurate:
Day: more closely fits the definition, but is generally HIGHER than the 'lowest 1-min average' (which I find quite frustrating);
Night: generally lower than day, but does not fit the definition.

How to best use it in practice (my opinion):
As long as you consistently wear/not wear the watch during sleep you will have a RHR that you can monitor for a 'trend'. That is the only real value (in my opinion) as the real/absolute value does not give you that much more benefit except for bragging rights when you get below 50/40/30. ;)

Hope this helps!

First of all:


How to best use it in practice (my opinion):
As long as you consistently wear/not wear the watch during sleep you will have a RHR that you can monitor for a 'trend'. That is the only real value (in my opinion) as the real/absolute value does not give you that much more benefit except for bragging rights when you get below 50/40/30. ;)

Hope this helps!

I think this is the important part, is not so much the absolute value but rather the relative trend which is useful and in that sense what matters is that the measurements are consistent.

I think the reason why the definition refers to needing awake is not because it's better more meaningful value of measured awake but because until now with wearables, it was very difficult to measure a resting heart rate during sleep, the person necessarily needs to awake to be able to actively measure their heart rate manually, they can't do that sleeping.

And it makes sense that if we are talking about the lowest treating heart rate that it is measured while sleeping, the deepest resting state, rather than awake and the great being more stimulated, also for the purpose of consistent measurements a 4 hour average while in stable sleep send more consistent from day to day measurement than just a minute average when awake and subjected to more varying stimuli from the nervous system as it awakes.

That said, I still don't trust the consistency of the measured resting HR, I get to much variation from day to day sometimes without justification, that I think is probably caused by movent of the placement of the sensor in different positions while at sleep. For setting a trend from month to month in a person that just started exercising is useful, but for detecting a change from day to day due to overexertion or incoming illness, not so much.

Last night i got 58 rhr. During the day rhr dosent change becuse lowest hr is 62. So I can turn off hr becuse hr wont change anyway. I know hr is good for calories so I wont turn it of