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RHR is being ovewritten later in the day with higher value

Mushin
over 3 years ago

Recently I got a brand new FR745 only to discover to my disappointment that the resting heart rate detection suffers from the same issues that have been around for previous generation Forerunners i.e. the watch ignores heart rate measurements taken in the morning right after waking up, but instead saves as daily RHR some weird value recorded during the day (that is mostly not even taken during the rest).

I do all my training based on pace and effort so I don't care about heart rate readings during daytime or on my runs (I actually have disabled HR gauge on my activity data screens). However when it comes to recovery the resting heart rate obviously is very important factor as it shows if you are not overreaching/overtraining or falling ill. Tracking RHR dynamics in the long run can show you trends that allow to change training accordingly. Therefore logging the resting heart rate the first thing in the morning after waking up is very important to make the right adjustments to both daily training and long term training plans.

I don't sleep with my FR watch so I just put it on right after waking up to check my RHR. There is nothing wrong with the live data from the optical heart rate sensor – the live heart rate data are fine. But I haven't gotten my head around when Garmin considers live heart rate data readings "good enough" to assume these can be stored as daily RHR for the historical purposes. Basically the issue is that though my RHR readings consistently are in the low 40s range (40-43) after waking, they rarely ever appear in history as daily RHR. I don't have time to lay down for hours in bed waiting when the watch will figure out it's time to save these numbers so I just get up only later to discover in the Connect app that the stored historical RHR is much higher than I actually measured and saw with my eyes right after waking up in the morning.

Today I got curious and spent lying in the bed for 60+ minutes after waking up waiting for the RHR to be saved to watch/Connect App history, but it never did. I even took on/off the watch several times after 10-15 minute periods as this sometimes helped with my FR645. Nothing. I got heart rate measurements as low as 38-39 at some points and consistently readings were low 40s for several minutes at a time. However these readings never appeared as detected RHR in watch history and were never synced to Connect App. Instead few hours later my historical daily RHR again was recorded as some random value in 50s.

Previously I owned FR645 Music and I actually disabled the heart rate detection entirely because of the same issue. It is more annoying to have unreliable or incorrect data in the daily history than to have no data at all. Because if you can't rely on historical readings you can't make any objective adjustments to training. I went back to measuring my morning pulse rate manually. Now I am asking myself why should I bother to buy Garmin watches at all if they can't fix the one issue that drives everyone crazy for years???? I have seen some posting about this literally years ago and the issue have never been addressed.

Dear Garmin – if you can't fix the issue, at least allow us to manually override and save the RHR measurement.

  • 0 over 3 years ago

    Since Garmin doesn't seem to want to fix this issue, why don't you just wear the watch to sleep? I get consistent RHR readings that way.

    I don't think this forum is the best place to file bugs anyway.

  • 0 over 3 years ago

    I also get consistent RHR reading in the mornings when I sleep with the watch on. Seems like there is a common denominator here

  • 0 over 3 years ago

    I don't have a 745, but I do have a watch from the same generation (and I had one from the previous generation). You definitely need to wear the watch to sleep to get a good RHR reading. You've probably seen this support article already, but just for the benefit of anyone else reading this thread:

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

    "Resting Heart Rate: This value is for the current day. It is calculated in one of two ways:

    • For users that wear their watch while sleeping, the watch will read and record the average of all readings while they sleep, excluding periods where any steps were detected or the measured heart rate falls outside reasonable bounds. A minimum of four hours of sleep time is required to register a reading.
    • For users that do not wear their watch overnight, RHR will be far less accurate and a rough estimate will be determined based on the lowest average reading over a one-minute time period during the day."
  • 0 over 3 years ago

    This Connect IQ data field app may also help:

    https://apps.garmin.com/en-US/apps/9d91352b-32b9-410a-b5b4-52bb60eafdd7

    This is a data field to help understand the way Garmin calculates Resting Heart Rate (RHR) after this was discussed on the forum. It records the 6 lowest heart rates observed during an activity and displays the time at each of them.

    ...

    At the bottom of the screen it displays the 'Lowest 1min avg HR'. One of Garmin's ways of determining RHR is the lowest average reading over a one minute time period. Leave this data field running long enough and it will provide you with your RHR.

    ...

    This is a data field which needs to be put on its own (ie 1 field layout) on a data screen of an existing activity.

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to reflecx

    Personally I don't like to sleep with a watch and I'm sure there are others who would feel the same.

    I agree that this might not be the best place to report bugs, but I thought that this is important enough topic that might get some community boost.

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to Mushin

    I think it makes sense to post in the forums too. That way you can see if other people have the same problem or feel the same way.

    You can also submit a suggestion to Garmin here:

    [https://www.garmin.com/en-US/forms/ideas/]

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to FlowState

    The problem is not that Garmin would not calculate RHR based on readings when I just wake up. It does and it temporarily shows this obtained value as Resting HR in the Connect App (not on the main screen, however).

    The problem is that it overwrites this RHR with some other value "calculated" later in the day that is definitely not my true resting HR since it's obtained while I'm doing some light activity like working on the PC, writing documents etc. Sometimes this happens after I have done morning workout session already and thus this RHR is already affected by training load. Hence I get inconsistent RHR history and can't reliably make assumptions about what's happening long term.

    This exact behavior was happening with my previous watches FR645 and FR235 as well. I ended up switching off wrist heart rate detection because the deviation from what I actually measured myself and wrote down after waking up was sometimes around 10 bpm.

    Back in high school during training camps our coach always asked us to check and write down our HR right after waking up. This way he was able to adjust our training accordingly and also see patterns how we reacted to training load several months apart. I was hoping that gadget costing several hundred bucks could substitute writing down this data for me. Appears it can't do even that.

  • 0 over 3 years ago

    This is a very good write up of an issue that's been affecting me too.

    Nothing records on RHR for at least 30m after I wake.  I usually go for a run around then, and the first read of RHR I get is often when I get back from the run, and it's "some random value in the mid 50s" as per the post.

    Over the course of the day it often, but not always reverts to a more sensible value that reflects my actual RHR.  Often that only happens at around 10pm despite the fact that I can see long periods of RHR during the day in the low 40s.

    It's kind of getting to be a game to see if I can work out how to push the watch to record the correct RHR earlier in the day.  But nothing works and in any event why would I need to do this when the watch is so good (ourstanding in fact) in other respects.