Heart rate monitoring questions

Wardbo

I’ve just got my Suunto 7 and my first impressions are that it is very nice! I have a couple of questions.

Am I right that the watch doesn’t send heart rate data to Google Fit unless it is a tracked activity? (I have linked my accounts and the sleep data is being transferred)
Does the watch tell you your resting heart rate? I can see my minimum heart rate but as I wear it sleeping, it is lower than my normal resting heart rate.

Jamie BG

Correct.
It provides a default. You can adjust that default (open suunto app on watch - scroll down to and press General Options - Profile - and scroll down to resting HR. Note check all your details here as they impact on a host of other functionality i.e. steps/ calories/active HR zone metering, etc etc.

You would have to calculate your own Resting HR. There are a couple of options to do this. Every month of so I test and retweek (because improved fitness can impact Resting HR). I test by running an indoor activity (so no GPS) first thing in the morning prior to getting out of bed - just lie there and meditate for around 5mins. Do that for around 5 days and then take the average of your average HR (tracked activity will provide average HR for a session).

Nigel Taylor 0

@jamie-bg said in Heart rate monitoring questions:

You would have to calculate your own Resting HR. There are a couple of options to do this. Every month of so I test and retweek (because improved fitness can impact Resting HR). I test by running an indoor activity (so no GPS) first thing in the morning prior to getting out of bed - just lie there and meditate for around 5mins. Do that for around 5 days and then take the average of your average HR (tracked activity will provide average HR for a session).

You could also use the Fit Breath app to do this, the pulsating circles helps to relax if you’re not an expert at meditation.

But your advantage I guess is you have the one pane of glass where you can see your Resting HR test in amongst your Suunto app tracked running/swimming/cycling etc?

Jamie BG

@nigel-taylor-0
I prefer to keep all my data in one place if at all possible. Plus there is an added advantage in using the suunto app as I can go into view summary, filter by that activity (which I don’t use for anything else), set the period filter to monthly/weekly as required; set the category to avg heart rate, and then the weekly/monthly summary provides me with an Avg HR for that week/month for all the times I did the test. This makes it super quick and easy to determine Resting HR and updating it, as the app is doing all the work in comparing/determining Resting HR work automatically.

True but taken out my profile from GFit as no real point to it, and it stops those annoying you reached your goal messages.

Wardbo

Thanks for confirming, that’s some good ideas. I’ve used Google Fit to show my resting heart rate with my old Wear os watch. It would be good to test how accurate Google Fit is compared to testing myself.

A Former User

@jamie-bg Great tip! Thx! To calculate the HR Max I used the 220-Age, but I noted that on my activtities I reached higher values that this difference. Is logic modify the HR Max by the HRMax values that we see in our activities? Or exist a better method to have this value correctly set?

Wardbo

@flypg I’ve modified mine to the max I have seen in my activities. I saw I was hitting the same max heart rate on several occasions so I’m pretty confident it is accurate. My new max heart rate is 8bpm higher than the 220-age formula.

Brad_Olwin

@flypg It is hard to hit a max HR so I look at my max HR across 6 mo and then add 5 bpm to that value. That has worked out well for settings zones for me as subsequent lab tests for Threshold have agreed well with my max HR setting.

A Former User

@brad_olwin Time to update my Max HR Question: you use the Max value of the last 6 months to added this 5, or use the Avg Max value of the last 6 months? Thanks a lot!

Brad_Olwin

@flypg I set my max HR on the S7 so that zones are set properly. If you use HR zones (especially on another watch) look up the zones percentages in the S7 manual. I set my max HR at 13 bpm above my actual max and that gets the zones on the S7 in about the right place so I can run and use the zone indicator.

To answer you question I would use your max. Other than S7, I set my max 2-3 bpm above my max recorded over the last 6 mo to 1 year. Nearly impossible to actually hit your max HR….

A Former User

@brad_olwin Perfect, THANKS A LOT!, I think that I understood all clearly. Time to check my max and looking how is going