Why are there no profiles for these sports? These are popular activities both in Europe and the US! I know I can use Cross Country Skiing, but there are two different styles (classic and skate) and Inlineskating can be done with or without poles. All of these should be mandatory inclusions in a top-end multisports watch! Can you please add them, Garmin?
PS I know that I can get Connect IQ apps for these activities, but I'd rather use native activities, and some sensors, line the Humon Hex doesn't work with third party apps.
I would love the same for hockey, or indoor ice-skating.
Since the F5 does not pick up each skate contact with the ice as steps, no GPS signal to use, and an unreliable optical heart rate which doesn't do well on a lot of wrist movement, you are left out in these activities. It would be nice if the device would actually use the servos/gyros for deriving type of motion during activities rather than steps only, and use amount and degree of movement to help profile and quantify the activity. Perhaps it does this in some activities that I don't use, but up here in a cold climate, many activities are done indoors, and hockey is one of them.
In a perfect world, there would be some sort of location beacon device that could be used indoors separate from GPS for accurate speed/distance (doesn't have to be absolute location perfect), and the wearables could also discern the difference between steps and other movements like skating/skiing. This information could go a long ways for indoor/outdoor sports that don't involve stepping and/or GPS visibility.
For now I have simply been using Cardio mode for hockey, which leaves a lot to be desired since it appears to be based almost exclusively on heart rate. I mostly wanted to be sure I wasn't pushing myself too hard, and the OHR struggles due to movement so it hasn't helped much, but that is somewhat expected.
Anyone know of a better profile to use that may better match these activities? I briefly tried the evaluation version of Connect IQ app that had hockey in it, and it required user interaction for some features that are impossible to deal with under hockey gloves.
I agree, hockey and Ice skating, also being huge sports with lots of serious atletes, definately need to have their own profiles!
I mean...Yoga? Seriously? Have anyone ever met someone who does Yoga then sits down to analyze....what? How many times they lifted the hand? What metrics does the Yoga profile even measure? Okay, maybe it's cool to look at the heart rate afterwards, but that could easlily have been covered with the said cardio profile. And serious competition sports where all kinds of metrics can be useful are missing profiles?
Come on, Garmin, please look out in the world and see what athletes are doing instead of just asking the people around the office for ideas for profiles!
I created a custom activity for my Inline Hockey activities. I selected no GPS and pretty much just use a few basic data fields (HR/Timer/Real Time). For a while I just used the Wrist Based HR - which was just fine - You could accurately see when I was playing and when I was on the bench. I recently bought a basic Garmin Heart Strap (for my running) and I can say that it works just fine.
As far as useful data - well, you are only going to get the basics. I like it because I like to track my heart rate (and a basic calorie count). It makes for interesting data analytics during my post game wind down (ehrm - Beer).
I'm not up on the finer aspects of ice hockey, for many contact sports where you can't where a watch due to the possibility of gouging an opponent (or in this case, perhaps the watch getting smashed through contact with the wall, an oppenent's stick or high speed puck), the HRM-Tri chest strap is often a better bet. Start the activity with the watch on the sidelines, then download the HR data after the game.
It is a no-hit adult league, so not to worried about smushing it, but I suppose it could happen. The gloves do go a long ways of protecting it though, as a heavy pad is right over the top (and why it cannot be accessed easily).
The heart chest strap seems a little silly to be honest. It would be awkward in the locker room to describe to a bunch of beer-drinking recreational guys. Then somehow I have to pretend I am serious about it... or some kind of wannabe athlete. The main metrics I would love to review over a few drinks would be calories burned (have to make room for chicken wings), heart rate, speed, amount of activity, etc. Would be a lot of fun simply to see how tired at the end we get when there is only 5 players per side with way too much ice time.
It is likely wishful thinking, but since the Fenix 5 is the paramount of sports wearables, just leave this as a feature request. AFAIK the IQ app only does HR also.
