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A rugged watch to track activity in the gym and full time stress tracking?

8431902
over 1 year ago

Hi folks. I am new here and have joined as I’m looking at buying my first Garmin smart watch and I like the look of the Instinct. As someone recovering from a viral illness I want something which tracks my workouts inside the gym (weights, resistance and gym bike), has full time stress and energy (body battery), calories used, has a decent battery life and looks rugged enough for a big bloke to wear all day.
I thought the Instinct was the watch for me but I’ve been reading about problems with it not measuring stress full time. I am also unsure if it has the right programs for my gym routine so can anyone recommend another watch in the Garmin line up which is good for inside gym work and provides day-long stress tracking please?

  • 0 over 1 year ago

    Instinct (as well as Instinct 2) does monitor the stress all day long. There are, of course, exceptions when you are in an activity, or moving too much, since the the HRV cannot be measured reliably, but that's the general problem of all watches with optical wrist HRM. Newer devices may have a better HRM sensor, but the problem of the HRV detection during an activity won't change that much.

    As for the choice of gym workouts - it is the same for practically all Garmin devices. Apart from the workouts available in Garmin Connect, you can also download workouts from 3rd party apps, such as for example the Training Peaks.

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to trux

    Thank you. It’s actually the Instinct 2 I’m looking at and I read there is a bug where the stress monitoring doesn’t work but perhaps I misunderstood. I don’t want to follow a workout suggested by the watch but I do want it to measure my activity and impact of static cycling, weights and resistance, is this possible or do I need to use an actual program for this? 

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to 8431902
    8431902 said:
    It’s actually the Instinct 2 I’m looking at

    Better would be asking on the Instinct 2 forum here: https://forums.garmin.com/outdoor-recreation/outdoor-recreation/f/instinct-2-series 

    8431902 said:
    Thank you. It’s actually the Instinct 2 I’m looking at and I read there is a bug where the stress monitoring doesn’t work but perhaps I misunderstood

    The "bug" some people complain about is just that the watch does not record the stress during Yoga activities. The watch simply does not measure the stress at any activity, since at most of them the data might be influenced by the movements. It is similar with other models too (though there may be some models recording the stress during yoga activities). 

    Other metrics is used, though, for evaluating your fitness and training status, even during activities.

    This is how the all-day stress data (orange and blue) looks like on a day with an indoor cycling session (green part). The light-blue profile is the Body Battery level.