Garmin has just put HRV onto my wearable

[Polar Bear]

Can anybody point me to a reputable resource so that I can properly evaluate the usefulness or otherwise of this gimmick?

I have read conflicting articles which the internet is of course famous for facilitating and if I am to keep this on my device I'd like it to be moderately useful.  I ditched blood oxygen in favour of a finger tester.  Did battery life on the wearable an incredible favour.

Is HRV yet another of those gimmicks that I can continue to happily live without?  I am sure that in the right environment it could be very useful but I'm not convinced that my dull and uneventful life warrants it.

[Polar Bear]

Oh, and to add insult to injury: I understand that Garmin chose to implement the apparently less accurate version of measuring HRV.  Why?  Even Apple changed to the reputedly better methodology.  Seems a bit unnecessary to me.

[chrisbainbridge]

HRV4Training.com is the goto website for all things HRV.

You need to wear your Fenix 6 all night, every night for at least 3 weeks in order to start to get reasonable data.  Only the trend is of any use and even then you need to take it in conjunction with everything else in your life.  If I am training for Olympic Gold and it helps me decide whether today is an ultr hard training session or a moderately hard then I suspect it is useful.
For those of where the choice is between a hard ride or easy ride and cooked breakfast i suspect it is yet another time waster.

[Polar Bear]

I wear the watch 23.5/7 taking it off to shower.  I have five days of trend so far so yes, nothing anywhere near useful but I was looking at my daily numbers and trying to find what they mean. 

It didn't help that the first resource that I read didn't say anything about age related, just what was bad.  Now, my formative readings are not in the bad zone according to that resource but not a million miles away.  Having said that I have no idea of scale as such from a random number so I cannot really call it worrying or wonderful.   I found other resources showing ranges associated with age but also separate for men and women.  According to their data I am in a good place.  And now I am confused thus I need a reliable and informed source.

I had similar issues with the quality of the blood oxygen crap Garmin was feeding me which is one reason why I bought something reputedly more accurate.

I'll give your suggestion a gander.  Thanks for that.  🙂

[Pedal Castro]

I looked into this some time ago but could find no science behind it, only marketing guff, to make me think it was worth as a training aid.

[L CC]

Mr Smith spent a while doing it 'properly' last year, maybe the year before, with a chest strap. I mirrored his for a couple of months and found it this: utter fiction.

I find 'how are you feeling' a more useful measure. I've turned it off/not activated/ignored it. It's not really rocket science, if you do a lot (for you) you're going to be tired. If you've had a beery session, you're going to sleep badly.

Sometimes (often) I think this data we throw at ourselves is just tripe and that there's a lot to be said for RPE and an early night.

[Kim]

First rule of marketing gadgets is that more features = moar betterer.

If you can add a whole new type of data by performing software bistromathics on the data from an existing sensor, that's an easy win.  It doesn't have to be any good, or even useful.

[rafletcher]

Mr Smith spent a while doing it 'properly' last year, maybe the year before, with a chest strap. I mirrored his for a couple of months and found it this: utter fiction.

I find 'how are you feeling' a more useful measure. I've turned it off/not activated/ignored it. It's not really rocket science, if you do a lot (for you) you're going to be tired. If you've had a beery session, you're going to sleep badly.

Sometimes (often) I think this data we throw at ourselves is just tripe and that there's a lot to be said for RPE and an early night.

This. How GP’s must hate all these devices and their less than precise and oft meaningless data. A bit like the mania for blood oxygen monitors during the worst of Covid.

[chrisbainbridge]

I suspect it has some utility in a very structured and regimented life such as a professional athlete where early warning of an impending virus for example would be useful.
Like Mr Smith my wife and I did it using the HRV4training app some years ago and found it a complete waste of time.

[Polar Bear]

Thanks chaps.  I have read enough from people with whom I associate some wisdom and experience to ditch this latest gar-immick.

Sometimes one has to despair of consumer tech.