Tips for using Oura with F6

I wish the Oura ring wrote into the Garmin ecosystem. Only used the ring for sleep and resting heart rate information and make a determination what training I will do. Then only use Fenix 6s performance training data. Aka ring as night and watch during the day. Not found a way to sync the data and therefore rarely use Garmin for recovery information. The oura ring activity data is poor but that’s not a surprise due to the size and form factors but far better and realistic than the Garmin watch. 

Hope this helps you determine whether to get an oura ring

I've had a 6X Pro Solar and Oura Ring for one year this month. I do not use Apple products as I'm a Windows/Android guy.

I wear the watch and the ring 24x7 and take note of what they both say regarding stress, RHR, body battery/readiness. I don't really favour the data from one over the other. In general the trends match between the two so it's not a problem to interpret the data and figure out what needs attention.

I do feed activity data from Garmin > Strava > Google Fit > Oura.

I do not feed data back from Oura to Garmin, although it does sync to Google Fit. For me, Google Fit is just a conduit for data syncing. I don't make any use of what's in there other than to automatically move it elsewhere as required. Google Fit also takes care of syncing weight between platforms, partially at least.

Given the overlap in features, with the watch offering so much more functionality, I would not replace the Oura Ring when the battery is dead. It's still going strong now, but I don't need to spend another £300 to corroborate data from the watch. The biggest benefit the ring has given me is to understand the value of additional sleep. Now that I understand that I don't need the message repeated over and over again, not for £300. 

Oh, and I also find that recommendations/targets for activity from Oura do not line up well with somebody who is actively training on a daily basis and basically fitter than the average person. The targets are modest in the extreme compared to what I might normally do in a day. It's more a sleep analysis product than a fitness product.

eezytiger nails this one on the head. With the latest training load and recovery goodies from Garmin/Firstbeat, there's very little value to be gained from Oura unless you are really into HR, HRV, and body temperature trends for your own recovery understanding and modeling. Or you want your activity, sleep, and recovery tracking to be independent of the watch provider.

As far as setup is concerned, my personal approach:

• Enable Garmin to write all data it gathers except for sleep. Oura can only import workout and weight information from Health at the moment. It also requests Active Calories permission, but it's not being used anywhere. I asked Oura support to pull both active calories and steps and actually use them if the ring isn't worn, and maybe they will get to that one day...
• Enable Oura to write sleep and heart rate data: their sleep analysis is superior to Garmin, and they will also provide nightly HR and HRV me thinks, which is fairly accurate
• Make Oura import workout information from Health automatically: this way all workouts you do with F6 are automatically counted towards your Oura activity goals

Wear your F6 24/7 if you want accurate Body Battery/stress/recovery metrics. Otherwise, wear it only during a day. Wear Oura at night. 

The reason I don't recommend wearing Oura during a day is because in daily use it's mostly a pedometer, nothing else. If you are sitting really still, it may capture that time as a "rest period" and measure HR and HRV, but what value does this information have intraday? I'd say Garmin's Daily Stress is far superior in that regard. Likewise, Oura can give you inactivity alerts, but so can F6. 

To answer your remaining questions:

acousticbiker said:

does the Garmin activity data provide helpful input into Oura’s algorithms?

Yes, Garmin's workout data is far superior to Oura. No double-counting will occur even if you wear your ring when exercising. Importing this info automatically saves you from having to enter workouts manually. Oura can detect hightened activity level, but it doesn't know what you did specifically, nor can it estimate calories very accurately.

acousticbiker said:

Is there any way to import Oura sleep data into Garmin Connect?

Nope, like any other activity tracking platform, Garmin doesn't allow somebody's else tracking to be pushed into their system.

acousticbiker said:

I currently use Garmin Recovery Advisor but that is only based on my most recent activity

If you mean Recovery screen that's part of the Training Status widget in F6, it should both accumulate recovery time from multiple workouts and take your stress and sleep quality into account to alter the duration of the estimated recovery time (I think that was a big change in 12.20). Otherwise, your RHR, Body Battery and Daily Stress are a fairly good indicator of where you are recovery-wise and how much load you can still handle, especially when combined with Training Load metrics. 

Thanks for the detailed reply!

- Good to know Oura can import Garmin workouts via Health. Is there any indication that it’s using that information in a meaningful way?

- On Garmin Recovery Time, unfortunately Garmin confirmed that it only takes into accoint your most recent activity (in other words, if I had 30 hours left and then did a very light activity, my new recovery hours would only be based on that light activity and likely be far less)

acousticbiker said:

s there any indication that it’s using that information in a meaningful way?

It only uses activity type, duration, and a number of calories. The latter two count against your active time and active calories since Ōura's activity goal for the day is expressed in calories.

acousticbiker said:

Garmin confirmed that it only takes into accoint your most recent activity

Thanks for checking that! I was thinking this was a relatively recent bug they intended to fix as everyone else, be it COROS or Suunto, who also has EPOC based recovery time adds to it, or at least preserves some recovery time with new workouts.

acousticbiker said:

On Garmin Recovery Time, unfortunately Garmin confirmed that it only takes into accoint your most recent activity (in other words, if I had 30 hours left and then did a very light activity, my new recovery hours would only be based on that light activity and likely be far less)

This is not my experience at all. This morning, when I woke, I had 71 hours recovery remaining, following a hard bike ride yesterday. I walked the dog for half an hour and recovery time was down to 69 hours after that, so really neither a plus not minus from the dog walk. Shortly afterwards I had another bike ride - mostly Z1, with a few efforts, but a much easier ride than yesterday. Now my recovery time is up to four days, which I believe is the maximum ever shown.

So, the walk did not replace yesterday's bike ride regarding recovery, or materially change it. However, today's bike ride did absolutely accumulate more recovery time on top of yesterday's effort. Recovery time will be modified by stress reaction and sleep quality, but it is nonsense to say that effort/recovery is based only on the last activity rather than cumulative.

On a separate note, the larger sizes of Oura Ring have a larger battery than the smaller sizes. I don't know if it goes up with every size or if there is a threshold, say size 10, above which a larger battery is fitted. If you have a choice of fingers and sizes it might be worth going for the larger size if it makes sense for you as this should extend the life not only day to day, but year to year. I have size 12 and, like I said, still going strong after a year.

eezytiger said:

Recovery time will be modified by stress reaction and sleep quality, but it is nonsense to say that effort/recovery is based only on the last activity rather than cumulative.

On several occasions recently I've seen my recovery time that was still 18-20 hours+ plummet and be replaced with just 3-4 hours following a light activity or hike. I do agree that what you describe is how it's supposed to work and how I think it worked all these years. But the fact remains: sometimes your outstanding hours get completely wiped out as if the watch indeed cared about the most recent activity.

eezytiger said:

If you have a choice of fingers and sizes it might be worth going for the larger size if it makes sense for you as this should extend the life not only day to day, but year to year.

I'm not sure this is necessarily correct, or that a difference in battery size is material. I have Gen 1 size 10 (the only thing that was available on eBay when I became interested) and Gen 2 sizes 11 and 12, due to fit issues. I'd say G1 lasted its 2-3 days even though I got it lightly used and used for another good year afterwards. It was around the time G2 was being released and Oura had those crazy delays. Both my G2 rings are now two years old, give or take, and the battery is going strong easily lasting the promised 5 days. 

Honestly, to get a value out of Oura I'd say fit is going to be absolutely critical and will have an impact on battery life too, i.e. if the ring becomes loose or overly tight during a night and has to constantly search for a good HR "signal", it will be draining battery like there's no tomorrow. And if it loses HR/HRV for good for extended periods of time, sleep and recovery analysis go out the window too.

And that is another reason I'm kind of skeptical now about the whole Oura thing. Too much of your recovery picture in this case is tied to how well a standard ring size fits your digits, how restful your sleep is, or even how much water you had prior to going to sleep or what your room temperature is.

I think it's not so much about the latest activity alone, but how your body responds to the (light) effort. If your stress/HRV remains healthy afterwards it may indicate accelerated recovery and no longer the need for extended recovery time. Conversely, if your body battery plunges with even light effort then your recommended recovery will remain high.

I think many things factor into the equations, such as a strong VO2max implying faster recovery capability, plus of course the actual values of HRV/stress as things moves on.

nickk said:

Honestly, to get a value out of Oura I'd say fit is going to be absolutely critical and will have an impact on battery life too, i.e. if the ring becomes loose or overly tight during a night and has to constantly search for a good HR "signal", it will be draining battery like there's no tomorrow. And if it loses HR/HRV for good for extended periods of time, sleep and recovery analysis go out the window too.

Agreed. I simply meant that if the choice is for the pinky finger or a larger digit then I'd go for the larger finger. I didn't know about differing battery sizes when I made my purchase, but I'm sure I've seen it mentioned by Oura themselves somewhere. Unfortunately I can't find the reference anywhere now. It may have been during email correspondence with support, but my emails aren't showing anything.