Suunto 9; sudden drop in Fitnesslevel (VO2max)
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Man 45 years old, sported cattle all his life.
After a year of not intensive sports this year went to the Alps. Did several light walks with family. Now my VO2max has halved… from 52 to 26 (!!).
In practice, this is not true, yes it is a bit harder but not like a 79 year old…
Have already changed my min and max heart rate (min 52, max 190).
Should I be patient or should the watch have a hard reset?
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@Diederik-Stoorvogel Be patient, it will take the watch some time. Also, best if you have a few higher intensity workouts as well. Walking will not be a great method to assess VO2Max.
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@Diederik-Stoorvogel VO2 max estimation in Suunto watches makes sense only for runs - on flat, with no wind or any other obstacles. And it’s a trend, so if your VO2 max is way lower than actual, it’ll take a few runs to adjust. It’s notorious for the VO2 max estimation to fall dramatically when walking or hiking. It’s been requested for quite some time tha we have control over which sports can be used for VO2 max calculation but sadly it is how it is.
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@Brad_Olwin thnx! When I’m back on sealevel I will do a coopertest to see where I stand these days.
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@Łukasz-Szmigiel thnx! Also found this:
https://forum.suunto.com/post/111569
Going uphill (40%) with a 15kg hiking bag will make heart beat fast but will make no significant distance…
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@Łukasz-Szmigiel Would be a nice feature indeed. I just disable HR monitoring during hiking to workaround this issue. Then my running stats are staying intact.
It works for me because I’m not really interested in HR values during a hike.
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It works the other way, as well. I am almost 70, mostly bike and ski (I don’t run). My “fitness age” fluctuated around the 60-65 for a long time, then went up to 75 and suddenly, I am at 37. I do record walks, occasionally, but very rarely. Am I supposed to celebrate? Honestly, nothing changed significantly; I am as fit as I was a year ago. I guess there is not much point in looking at that number.
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Yeah I noticed (and complained) a few month ago, my Vo2max went from 60 down to 30 something… the fact that the watch tries to calculate Vo2max while hiking is completely useless ("let’s estimate the physical performances of someone, but we don’t know how heavy his backpack is, and we don’t know how difficult the terrain is, its the perfect conditions for a good Vo2max estimation ! " – Suunto Marketing/Engineers)
It took me a little over a week of running to get the watch to give me the usual estimates (that correlates nicely with Cooper test values, and with my actual performances improvement/degradation) -
@Elipsus yes it’s pretty useless. Especially on long and easy trips. I always get a large drop of vo2max estimation.
But you know what’s a great workaround?
In 9PP and SV you can actually disable the widget responsible for vo2max
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@Łukasz-Szmigiel But, but I like getting my Vo2max estimation when I’m running you know ? besides, I haven’t tried (and my watch is in reapair ATM), but are you sure the Vo2max isn’t calculated when the widget is disabled ?
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@Elipsus it’s calculated. It just doesn’t drive me mad whenever I see it
VO2max estimation has been discussed on this forum many times before and I think we’ve settled the debate on that the current implementation is useful only for seeing trends (getting better or worse with time), not an actual level, and that it does go bonkers on longer walks or hikes.
Hopefully something will change for the better soon with the introduction of new fitness features.
You can also use runalyze to sync your workouts with it. It has its own VO2max estimation algorithm, which you can also adjust.