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Slowl increase in Resting Heart Rate, found the cause.

For the past month I've been seeing a slow increase in my Resting Heart Rate. Because of this I've been reducing the intensity of my workouts thinking that it's been caused by Over Training. That has not had any positive response in my resting heart rate and for the last week I have seen some slight indications I may be going backwards a bit.

So, yesterday I went back to my high intensity Saturday workout and did almost 2 hours of cardio followed bu by a half hour of weight training. Then I did the grocery run and after that spent 2 hours replacing the heater core in the car. Also took the dog for a 2 1/2 mile walk just to make good and sure I met my Step Count Goal. Ended the day with over 22000 steps and the total calorie burn for the day was 4966 with 3105 active calories. About 9:30 PM I was pretty beat so went to bed early expecting to wake up with a resting heart rate in the mid 60's or higher. Woke up feeling great after 8 1/2 hours of sleep and a resting heart rate of 48.

Looking back I now see why my resting heart rate has been going up and it's a bit of a DOH. I purchased my 235 in August and at this point I have 60 days without missing my daily step count goal. Starting about a month ago I started waking up earlier to get in some additional steps before work so I would be able to make that Daily Step Count Goal. As a result as I have added miles in the morning I've been getting less sleep as I have set the alarm earlier and earlier. The current step count goal is 16,572 and I think I've just about had enough of that tune. Don't know what the record is for that auto increasing goal and really don't want to know. What I now know is I've been beating my feet up badly trying to hit 16,000 and more and losing sleep at the same time. So, I'm going to set a fixed goal that allows me to get enough sleep and go back to pushing myself when working out at the gym.

Point here is that if you are inclined to ignore the importance of sleep like I was you will pay a price for that. It's probably THE reason why Connect Mobile has the Steps and Sleep side by side on the same screen. Folks be a bit brighter than I was for the past month and place as much importance on daily Sleep as you do on your Daily steps.

0 michaeljswann over 8 years ago

Why is your step goal 16,000? Why not just manually override it in Garmin Connect to a fixed goal of 10,000 and be done with it?

I use a Fitbit One to track steps. Fitbit works off 10,000. If I make it to 10,000, great. if I don't, I'm not concerned about it. I started tracking steps to see how active I was (or wasn't as the case may be) at work.

Recovery is where the gains are to be made. Rest days and sleep are needed after hard workouts, as you have found.

No point killing yourself just to achieve a step goal. There's more to life than that.

0 KR17 over 8 years ago

Interesting.
Although would be interesting to know if this was more than a one-off.
I've also found myself getting up earlier and earlier so I can squeeze in exercise -either the cycling commute to work, or leaving work early for a swim.
Was wondering myself whether I was getting enough sleep so it would be interesting to know how much difference it makes.
What were your sleep hours before and after out of interest?