Messed up training stats

Former Member over 5 years ago

My max heart rate used to be over 190. I used my watch for 3 years collecting my fitness stats. As i became fitter, my max hr dropped to 175. I changed my max heart rate on the watch and since then my stats are totally messed up. My VO2 max dropped 6 points. I tried to set my hr above 190 again my no luck. I have done about 20 runs on the lower hr setting but the stats are not showing any improvement. What to do???

0 Daniel_Ilg over 5 years ago

Vo2max is not dependent on the HRmax you set. So there must be other reasons.

0 subra over 5 years ago

VO2max is calculated by an extrapolation of the dependence of HR vs. Speed to HRmax as can be seen in figure 2 of this paper

assets.firstbeat.com/.../white_paper_VO2max_30.6.2017.pdf

Firstbeat develops this SW for Garmin.

Also the well known "The heart rate ratio method" according Uth et.al. VO2max ~ HRmax / HRrest * 15.3 is based on HRmax.

en.wikipedia.org/.../VO2_max

Therefore if you lower the HRmax then VO2max decreases. There are 2 ways to increase VO2max

1) run faster

2) adjust also HRrest so that the quotient HRmax / HRrest is the same as before

But be patient VO2max is a long time metric of fitness that needs some weeks to adjust. That means you cant expect that VO2max is in 3 days on the former level.