Related
Options

High Aerobic Shortage: No High Aerobic Minutes

iainmmac
2 months ago

My Load focus keeps telling me I have "high aerobic shortage", and the figure for high aerobic minutes has not changed in weeks.   In this time I have done several workouts that I would class as high aerobic, so I am now confused as to what makes the watch count high aerobic minutes.

I do not do any runs, I log indoor and on the water rows, and walks and hikes.

I did a couple of indoor rows trying to address this issue, with the bulk of the workout at the very top of the green aerobic arc, and a good few minutes in the orange threshold arc, but absolutely no change to the high aerobic minutes.

I also did a long on the water row, which I would have classed as aerobic, lasting for a couple of hours with breaks included, and strangly the watch classified this as training effect 'sprint' despite the bulk of the row being in the 'easy' blue arc with some in the 'aerobic' green arc.  Again no change in the high aerobic minutes, so why classify this as sprint which it definitely wasn't.

So I am somewhat confused as to how the watch classifies training effect for rowing.  It does not make much sense, and I cannot see how it correctly reflects the effort i am putting in to the workout.

Curious if anyone else has any feedback on this, and whether it might be rowing related, or a more general problem or misunderstanding by myself.

  • 0 2 months ago

    (edited)

    I have the exact same issue, but with anaerobic time.

    For me it would seem that pushing the edge of what I can do on my Concept 2 Row erg, is never enough to get my heart rate high enough to qualify for "anaerobic". Even when pushing into max (red) heart rate zones. I wish I knew what the power zone I am in for this. Nor is going for a run, even at max heart rate and pushing 325 watts, well beyond my lactate threshold. What does work (sometimes) is pushing myself hard on my wheel-on trainer (bicycle) and then only sometimes when doing sprint training. Here is an example of what did work 30 min 125 watt warm up, 10 sec 325 watt 10 sec 60 watt, repeat sprint/rest 8 times, 5 min rest 105 watt, another set of 8 sprint/rest, 15 minute cool down 105 watt. This workout was a daily suggested by garmin, it was SUPER challenging and by sprint 7 I was struggling. So I built my own personal workout to mimic it but take it down just a tiny bit with 20 sec 315 watt 20 sec recovery, and while it had over 4 minutes of neuromuscular zone, it had no anaerobic benefit. It was classified as aerobic, in what world is 4 minutes of neuromuscular aerobic? To get there, I clearly have gone beyond my lactate threshold.

    As for your long row? I have no idea clearly it matched some algorithm for sprint training. 

    Clearly we are not pushing hard enough for Garmin give us anaerobic time, and the goalpost is moved on you depending on the exercise. Basically I gave up caring about their suggestions when 4 minutes of truly hard exercise didn't qualify.

    Both Heart rate Time, and Power Zone are being looked at.

  • 0 2 months ago

    I did look at your post again, your issue is High Aerobic not Anaerobic. I have no issue getting High Aerobic. but you have to have over 1//2 of your workout into your orange and red heart rate zone. For me that is around a 2:25 minute/500 meter. Any slower and I'm blue and green and low aerobic.

    Try a 5K or a 10K in the orange zone.

    Do you use a chest strap HRM? or just the watch? Even Garmin's best watches are still optical sensors. Even A Polar upper arm Optical provides weird heart rate graphs. Garmin's cheapest Chest strap is a big improvement on monitoring heart rate, so that might be your issue as well.

    Oh and in case you have not noticed by now, Garmin looks down their entitled nose at "rowing". To them it's not a real exercise like running and bicycling. They do not give you the same credit as they would for either of those two. Rowing HM? nope, you'll never make it out of the "recreational zone" of your endurance score. I know, 2023 I did 12 rowing HM with my Fenix 7, but no running or bicycling, and never got a good number for my endurance score.

  • 0 2 months ago in reply to jfb9301
    jfb9301 said:
    Rowing HM? nope, you'll never make it out of the "recreational zone" of your endurance score. I know, 2023 I did 12 rowing HM with my Fenix 7, but no running or bicycling, and never got a good number for my endurance score.

    Interesting reply, thanks.  The above must be worthy of a bug report to Garmin, I did wonder why my endurance score was not changing after long rows, although mine aren't half marathon length.  There can't be many activities that as good for endurance as rowing!

  • 0 2 months ago

    Since I started using the HRM 600 with my Fenix 6 Pro, I have occaisonally been getting the same Aerobic shortage issue.

    But I am suspecting the HRM rather than my Fenix 6 (which I have zero issues with for the last four years).

    When I connected the HRM this morning to go for a run, I suddenly had daily steps increase for yesterday of 100k +????

    I agree with the Bug reporting idea, how do we submit one of those BTW.

  • 0 2 months ago in reply to gtjeddah

    Weird.

    I have had a HRM Pro, HRM Pro+ and now a HRM600, and had very consistent numbers with each of them. In fact the HRM600 seemed to solve one of my issues. When Cycling, I use my Edge computer and not my watch to track the activity, but when I do this, the Edge and the Activity had the correct HR and Calories, but the HR graph on my watch and in GC (Pro and Pro+) never reflected correct HR for the period of the activity, Calories would usually update sometime later. With the HRM600 all but one recent exercise the Fenix 8 displayed correct HR throughout the exercise. I've never had an issue with bonus steps.

    I've never bothered with bug reports. Most of my issues only affect a small number of users, they seem to focus on bugs that affect a majority number of users. I could say a lot more, but it's off topic and not helpful.