Is there any way to customize recovery times?

PS: there is one area where the EPOC model used by Garmin is not good enough: strength training (or any activity that requires short bursts of anaerobic or neuro-muscular effort.

Because, for strength training, the anaerobic EPOC is wildely underestimated, Garmin's EPOC for strength just doesn't cut it to assess overall recovery needs.

This is a notable gap that doesn't take away using EPOC for recovery, but it is a gap in EPOC.

I hope Garmin will develop a model to correct this. This would be a game changer for all the people who go to the gym to build strength, and certainly would be a reason for me to upgrade to a new watch.

Disclaimer: I'm just speaking as a layman here and I have some genuine questions. Not trolling or attempting to score "gotchas". I'm prepared to admit I know less than nothing about the topic at hand. But this is an interesting topic to me and I would like to learn more about it.

Etupes25 said:

We are not seeking the "muscle recovery" that you seem to define by elimination of soreness or elimination of fatigue but the physiological recovery state so that training can be continued and adaptations built over time while reducing the risk of injury.

Are you suggesting that muscle soreness (or in the extreme case, muscle pain) and muscle fatigue have no bearing on whether a person has "recovered" from exercise? I use "recovered" informally here.

My understanding is that you use "recovery" to mean that the body is ready for additional exercise which should lead to further adaptations (as opposed to injury), but please correct me if I'm wrong.

If someone's muscles are still extremely sore or fatigued (let's say to the point where ordinary activity is impaired), yet the Garmin recovery advisor says "0 hours", is it likely that they will benefit from further hard workouts at this time?

In the extreme case, if I tear a muscle and it hasn't yet healed, but the Garmin recovery advisor says "0 hours", am I good to go?

Etupes25 said:

philipshambrook said:

Suggesting that the Recovery Time metric provided from Garmin is sufficient to determine muscular loading post long activity

I don't suggest this at all, and Garmin's recovery approach either. The EPOC approach is enough to evaluate how much recovery is needed before new training can occur so that adaptation happen during the entire stress/traing, recovery & adaptation cycle.

I mean, I don't know, this is the basics of training.

Maybe the muscle recovery concept is a red herring in the context of training, since we don't want muscles to "recover" back to where they were. We want them to adapt, along other dimensions and capabilities in the body.

Etupes25 said:

the watch is capable ot anticipating your recovery needs during exercise, without having to measure "muscle proteins and minerals" to assess muscle recovery.

Based on these quotes, it seems that either:

1) those who disagree that EPOC correlates to "muscle recovery" are using the wrong definition of muscle recovery (it's definitely not the elimination of soreness / fatigue)

and/or

2) "muscle recovery" is a red herring (it's not relevant and/or it's not the goal of training). In fact we don't want muscles to recover. By the same logic, couldn't we say that we don't want the body as a whole to "recover" -- i.e. return to its previous state -- we want it to adapt to exercise? Wouldn't this render the entire subject of "recovery" pointless (or at least in need of a semantic overhaul?)

and/or

3) the watch actually assesses muscle recovery just fine, based on EPOC

2) and 3) seem to be somewhat at odds with each other.

What is the correct definition of "muscle recovery" that everyone should be using? If it's not "elimination of soreness / fatigue", would the correct definition make sense to the layman? If, again, it means "ready to exercise such that further adaptation is possible, while reducing the risk of injury", does this imply that soreness/pain and fatigue has no bearing on the body's ability to make further adaptations and avoid injury?

What do you think of this 2015 interview with a Firstbeat employee on the topic of "recovery", where he says that the manual recovery tests on Suunto Ambit3 are incapable of detecting muscle pain? If muscle pain is irrelevant to recovery, why did the interviewer ask about it? Why did the employee carefully answer that muscle damage and weakened muscle level recovery can't be detected by the tests, rather than saying "muscle pain / weakness / fatigue is irrelevant to recovery"?

(Yes I realize it's a bit tangential, given that they're discussing on-demand recovery tests on a different brand of watches. I'm more interested in the discussion of muscle pain / damage / weakness in the context of "recovery", from the POV of Firstbeat.)

https://www.suunto.com/sports/News-Articles-container-page/Recovery-interview-with-Firstbeat/

We all know proper recovery is an essential part of any training regime, but what exactly happens in our bodies while we rest, how does it impact our performance and how can new recovery features released to Ambit3 watches support our recovery? To get the answers on the science of recovery, we talked with Tero Myllymäki, who leads the physiological analytics development at Firstbeat Technologies.

...

What about muscle pain or flue, will the recovery test recognize these?

Even though the autonomic regulation has regained normal levels, intense or abnormal exercises done by an athlete might cause muscle damage, as well as risk to the overall body energy levels. These situations cannot be monitored via autonomic regulation tests. Weakened muscle level recovery can be seen during the exercise, although you wouldn’t be able to see it in the recovery tests.

FlowState said:

this is an interesting topic to me

You bet it is! Thank you for the post. I appreciate your sound logic and questions. Sport Sciences is a complex science, full of specialties and areas under research. It is also changing fast as new technology is available to observe, measure and model.

FlowState said:

My understanding is that you use "recovery" to mean that the body is ready for additional exercise which should lead to further adaptations (as opposed to injury)

Exactly. In the context of training (vs illness or surgey recovery for example), we want to give enough time and/or sollicitation to the body so that its reaches a new equilibrium with new capabilities (red cells, various hormones, new/stronger fibers, etc). Some of these new capabilities take a long time to develop across training sessions, some less time. Increasing VO2 max takes more time than lactate processing capabilities, but the former lasts longer without exercise than the latter.

FlowState said:

If someone's muscles are still extremely sore or fatigued (let's say to the point where ordinary activity is impaired), yet the Garmin recovery advisor says "0 hours", is it likely that they will benefit from further hard workouts at this time?

Most likely not. But the problem is different now. The Garmin's EPOC model would not work as intended, just like VO2 Max might be off, or your LTHR wrong. However EPOC as a process reflects the work that the body accomplishes to bring itslef back to equilibrium, heal and develop new capabilities. Another approach is to use HRV to detect the status of the recovery process. Just like EPOC, VO2 Max, FTP, HRV status models are not perfect.

FlowState said:

In the extreme case, if I tear a muscle and it hasn't yet healed, but the Garmin recovery advisor says "0 hours", am I good to go?

See above. A muscle will develop a major tear when too many micro-tears have occured. The last straw breaks the camel back. WHile you have no debilitating pain with micro-tears in the muscle fibers, the body is hard at work bringing blood and a bunch of chemicals to help the cells repair. Sometime, in tendons, the adaptation effect is counter productive. Too many small blood vessels grow in the tendon, too many fibers grow in erratic directions, scar tissue forms and you are somewhat injured: tendonitis. If you continue, the tendon will weaken even further and maybe tear. Then the pain will stop you completely. During all this process, the body will work hard to do all this work (EPOC), homeostasis will be pertubed (HRV), but the models of the watch might not capture all this perfectly.

FlowState said:

does this imply that soreness/pain and fatigue has no bearing on the body's ability to make further adaptations and avoid injury?

Soreness, very little. It is not a well understood phenomenom and there is quite a bit of research about it. Practically, I don't know a coach who will give you a pass because your are sore. I don't know any athlete who can affort to have "fresh legs" to continue training effectively. Pain is different: you lost capabilities because the body is protecting itself. It is too late, the safeguards of the training plan, the watch metrics or the lab measurement didn't stop you in time, or you didn't listen.

FlowState said:

Why did the employee carefully answer that muscle damage and weakened muscle level recovery can't be detected by the tests

FlowState said:

These situations cannot be monitored via autonomic regulation tests. Weakened muscle level recovery can be seen during the exercise, although you wouldn’t be able to see it in the recovery tests.

If te is right. At that point, the cycle of stress/recovery/adaptations turned out inadequate, maybe despite all the metrics brought to bear: maybe the athlete went just "above and beyond" one last straw too much. This is what he means. The Suunto recovery tests (HRV-based) might be influenced by other factors than training (just like Garmin's).

This is why the Garmin approach is superior. It focuses on estimating the physiological cost of training in the context of the current athlete "performance condition". While the Garmin EPOC model is not perfect, it is good it is combined with other dimensions (stress, sleep and HRV status) to evaluate when the individual is ready.

The old adage doesn't go away. Listen to your body, in particular with aches, swelling and "energy level". Vice versa, listen to the hidden signals (EPOC, HRV) when the hormones are high and you feel "just great"

I assume by training load you mean acute load? Which was at the top range of optimal for a good chunk of the time that it was saying maintaining or recovery. If you mean the training effect, there I get 3.something on cardio fairly often if I go as hard as I can while the anaerobic side never seems to get above 1.

With strength training I was avoiding using the muscles that I use for the harder cycling (no leg days), as I quickly learnt that my HR will remain quite low if I do both leg day and hard cardio. The soreness and fatigue in my legs is coming exclusively from the hard cycling and general functional cardio (like doing chores).

Thank you for your answer.

Until very recently I had not touched my Max HR at all, so the default that Garmin figures out. Like a week or so ago I updated it to the formula age * 0,7 - 208, while intending to do a "stress test" sprint to see a more real world estimate. Currently the highest HR I've gotten in an activity is still 10bpm lower than the one I got with a formula.

Rest HR I also haven't touched either, I should probably fix that too. Since it is like 20 or so bpm lower than what I think it actually is.

Well I hope that is the case, since it makes sense now that you mention it. I've been constantly frustrated by the fact that I'm trying as hard as I can, only to get "base" or even "recovery" from what I felt was HIIT or Threshold, "maintaining" from what I felt was productive. Everything gets labeled as low aerobic, "consider doing faster and harder activities" and then on top of that the recovery time being short.

Thank you for your answer!

I'll chime in and add another situation where I feel Garmin's recovery calculation doesn't correspond well to how my body feels: hiking with a heavy backpack. When I'm out in the forest on a multi-day hike, my watch gives me surprisingly little training load and recovery time, yet my body doesn't feel up to running for a couple of days. 

When I think about it, it's not surprising that the recovery is low, because my HR doesn't go up that much (more than general walking but less than running). So my cardiovascular load has been quite low. However, my leg muscles are definitely tired, even though I haven't done actual anaerobic strength training. It's just that my legs have had to work harder and muscles are tired. If Garmin EPOC should be able to take this into account, should I get longer recovery times and load from hiking as well?

This is probably and I also hope, the solution to the problem. I had not touched the max HR until very recently and currently it is based on age * 0,7 - 208, while I'm waiting to get an opportunity to go for a "stress test" sprint, to see a more realistic max HR. The outcome of the formula is still 10bpm higher than my highest ever HR during an activity.

I've been trying to get at least 1 intense activity per week on the bike. More if I felt good about trying it, less if I was still recovering.

I only use the watch. And it will be like that for a long time, power meters are kind of pricey. The strap I don't see as necessary, the watch is accurate enough for me.

I don't run at all actually. I despise running as it just hurts too much, but it's always been the thing that gets me out breath the quickest and the most intense, so I'd assume it spikes the heart rate enough from sprints to get the result before I need to stop due to pain.

However I've been biking all year round rain and snow for years now on the heavy bike I use. But I wouldn't do the max hr thing on a bike, as I doubt I could get that high with the routes and traffic I have access to.

Sorry I don't understand what you mean with 24/24? However I already know my resting heart rate, the watch has simply confused my sleeping heart rate with that, hence it's lower than it should be and haven't touched it because it didn't seem important.

Thanks for the extra info!

Oniontar said:

Sorry I don't understand what you mean with 24/24?

I think he meant 24/7

Oniontar said:

However I already know my resting heart rate, the watch has simply confused my sleeping heart rate with that, hence it's lower than it should be and haven't touched it because it didn't seem important.

Afaik resting HR is only important (to Garmin) when you set zones by HRR (heart rate reserve, which is max HR - resting HR *). HRR zones are preferred by some (including me), bc they account for improved fitness when your resting HR goes down — you should be able to do the same work at a lower heart rate, and you have a greater range (“reserve”) to work with.

(*) i.e. x% HRR is calculated as (x% * (max HR - resting HR) / (max HR - resting HR)) + resting HR

For the purpose of HRR zones, you can either ask Garmin to use the average resting HR (I think this is for the last 7 days) or you can enter a resting HR value manually.

Garmin calculates resting hr as the lowest 30 minute average in a 24 hour period, and they do recommend wearing the watch overnight for better data. I agree this is different from the traditional definition (or means of measurement), where you’re supposed to measure your HR immediately after waking up, but before you actually get up.

https://support.garmin.com/en-CA/?faq=F8YKCB4CJd5PG0DR9ICV3A