Anyone using HRV? (Heart Rate Variability)

I bought and starting using the O3 at the end of November primarily for its sleep phase metrics.

Regarding HRV, I have the same results as you. As you know, Oura’s HR is wrong (for me doesn’t go above 130 even during SS/threshold), so my assumption is that if it can’t accurately capture HR, how can it accurately capture HRV, at least as of yet?

We’ll see if it (HR and HRV) improves once Workout HR feature improved and particularly after they introduce their new sleep algorithm that will begin to use its new sensors. However, in all cases chest HRM straps are going to give you more accurately results than finger or wrist (i.e. Whoop) estimators.

2 Likes

I found this new app for the garmin:

I tested this app the other day and I don’t know what to think of it. I was riding indoor in a solid constant Z2 ride by power and HR normal standards….In the meantime, the number would go as low as 0.4 which indicated I was in threshold !!

Totally useless data IMO.

I have a rule: garmin for navigation. And nothing else. Ever. And sometimes, I don’t even use garmin for nav. :upside_down_face:

2 Likes

Only found out about this recently… in Intervals.icu you can now track your HRV on the Fitness page using a custom chart :sunglasses::

Chart setup:

On the Fitness page:

3 Likes

I was fairly excited about this, but plotted against HRV logger and garmin was pretty poor. My LT1 per HRV logger is 123/124 HR and has been for the 9ish months I’ve used it. I was riding around 110bpm and HRV logger was giving me values greater than 1.0, as expected, but the garmin app was giving .4-.5.

Obviously n=1, but I wouldn’t base a decision on garmin without testing against something else first.

N=2, I had the same experience. Let us hope the developer makes the necessary adjustments.

What do you use to populate the data in intervals.icu ?

1 Like

I export my HRV4Training data to Dropbox. I’ve then set Intervals.icu to automatically pull the readings in from Dropbox:

image

2 Likes
3 Likes

What HR strap are you using?
I had similar results with my Tickr, and it wasn’t until I looked at the ‘removed artifacts’ in the HRV logger app that I saw that half the data was removed artifacts. The numbers were way off and completely bogus.
Switching to an H10 solved this. Check to see if that app has anything to track and/or deal with bad data.

2 Likes

3 year old Garmin Ant only. Incidentally, 2 days later after the test the case broke. I ordered a Polar H10 as well, will get it in 2 days. Will test again.

The developer has released 2 newer versions, so he is actively trying to improve it.

image

Will do another test with the new strap and will report back.

Other people reported problems with the app’s numbers with straps that worked in other apps, so it does seem there is more than just a possible ‘bad’ strap.
I spent a few weeks struggling with weird/bad numbers, and thinking I was super far off on my estimates of LT1 before I figured out it was the strap. The tickrs that I have had have generally been just fine for HR, but I think HRV requires a lot more from a strap.

I initially thought Oura was way off based on my Tickr HRV and Elite HRV. But others here said Tickr was not reliable for HRV so I now have Polar H10. Oura’s overnight HRV is actually right in line with morning readings from Polar using 4 different apps: Elite HRV, HRV4Training, Kubios, and HRV Logger. All are in same 17-20 range. That said, after readings I do a 10 minute guided mediation. If I retest after, HRV goes up 30 to 60 points or so.

2 Likes

The guy is updating the app constantly and posts his update on Twitter. I’ve no idea whether it is accurate or not but tis might be helpful:

Ok. So I got my Polar H10 and tried alphaHRV again. However, big caveat, today was endurance intervals (everything below low tempo). I think that messes up the calculations…but in any case, the numbers still look way off.

I will try again using a ramp steady efforts and see.

Bruce @BJRMD seems to like Runalize protocol and analysis

1 Like

Ok, I got much better readings from the Garmin native Alpha HRV app. These measurements seem very sensitive to all sorts of conditions.

The results check out with Runalyze and the Collab Python Notebook:

image

In sum, I didn’t learn much from these measurements relative to my own RPE estimation of aerobic threshold that I developed after 6 months of training.

1 Like

Could it be that your own RPE calibration is off then ?:slight_smile:

Think we have to wait and see more scientific research on the matter before we can really validate the numbers.

According to this independent study:

“The greatest degrees of confidence are extended to HRV4TR/ECG and OURA, as our data suggests they can most accurately report rMSSD”
“The Oura smart ring (PPG) exhibited better accuracy than all cECGs except for HRV4TR/ECG and the FSTBT (cECG) lacked in rMSSD accuracy.”