For Discussion: Your Watch Doesn’t Know How Much Recovery You Need

Do you have additional metrics available in Settings? Here is where to look:

That is a screen shot from the paid version of TrainingPeaks.

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Same list in the free version. It doesn’t appear that at the moment TrainingPeaks is distinguishing between paid / free for available metrics

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In other words, TP free and paid provides a LOT of metric tracking. And you can do some interesting things, for example I’m recording Garmin aerobic and anaerobic training effect using Abdomen and Glutes.

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My highest (least stressed) HRV in the last month was the day I came down with covid. Back to normal the next day, but sick for two weeks.

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So I’ve been using Athlytic on my Apple Watch for a couple months now and although I don’t see it being able to tell me what my “best” day will be it does seem to do a pretty good job at dictating how I’ll feel on a ride.

If my recovery is low, for whatever reason (over-training, poor sleep, alcohol), and I ride my power output is lower and I feel it. On the other hand, if it’s higher, even considering factors that you think would negatively impact it, power output is higher and the ride feels better.

Not sure if I’d spend the money on a whoop (and I have Wahoo instead of Garmin) but for the $30 or so for a year that Athlytic is it’s more than worth it to me…at the very least, it helps me correlate what helps recovery vs hinders it.

I do a 120km ride and my watch says “recovery: 3 days”

my thoughts are “are you new?^”

If it’s outside your baseline measurement, that’s still an indication something is up. Not everyone follows the HRV guidelines exactly. When I stop training even for a couple of days, my HRV goes way down. When I get back into it, my baseline ramps back up quickly. It’s about seeing what your normal is and then looking for times when it does strange things… then figure out why!

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I do a 120km ride and I hear “time for a beer” before riding some more :laughing:

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Mine does… consistently gets it correct.

I think 75 - 80 % of people are misunderstanding what it is measuring and telling you.

I often do long ride or run and it says 2 days recovery, I get 9 hours Quality sleep and in the morning I get the “improve recovery time” message recovery time “6 hours.” If I get 6 hours it stays the same. If I go out for the night it says delayed recover but has still reduced because time has passed.

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I don’t know if my watch has a recovery advisor but my edge does and that’s usually nonsense :joy:

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This

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My Garmin is finally telling me I have a VO2max and it’s been creeping up consistently. Obviously that means it’s 100% accurate and reliable thank you very much :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:.

I do actually like the metrics so far and find them an informative guide.
I still haven’t quite worked out Garmin’s Training Load metric. Their verbage is around EPOC which doesn’t seem like a useful measure over seven days. I would have assumed it’d be linked to TSS/CTL but mine’s at 1400+ after seven days which is obviously not TSS :man_shrugging:. So far I rate it. I need to feed it more data and watch how it learns and develops.

Mine is particularly bad because my indoor rides through TR don’t feed to GarminConnect, so the Garmin is only processing outdoor rides, and so anytime I stretch a commute long or actually do intervals outdoors I get something pretty stupid long, like in the three to five day range… And then I’ll get the VO2max update saying I’ve got (unreasonably high number).

Sure Garmin, I just managed to pull off 6x2 minutes @~ 125% and my HR was back down to Z2 in three minutes, but yeah, that’s a 4 day recovery and I’ve gotten that estimated VO2max into the mid-fifties with 28 minute commutes and a monthly outdoor ride with the kids. :man_shrugging: :clown_face:

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I mean, GIGO, right?

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Ditto. The vivoactive is comical when it comes to predicting how much sleep I get but I feel like the body battery is really accurate.

This

I feel, that using HRV / Resting HR tell you how well you recovery strategy is working, but most people don’t have a recovery strategy, and only look at the figure after the workout or on their edge (which doesn’t have all the data), have a beer, bad night sleep and when they feel stiff the next day, presume it was because of a hard workout

I’ve found HRV e.t.c a good guide to how my recovery strategy is working, I noticed that my recovery was decreasing recently, since the clock changes, so bough a black out blind, recovery improved

Taken from the YouTube I linked:

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I really can’t work it out. For instance after a sleepless night when I first sync the vivioactive it’ll say something like 7 hours sleep which is a slight over estimate. It’ll then gradually after several syncs will rise to 8h which correlates with the hours I was in bed (but definitely not asleep). Then again it’ll gradually over the next hour of syncs rise to a plus 8h sleep which seems to include the time I spent sitting on the sofa before going to bed :exploding_head:

Yup. That seems about right. :joy:

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Same for me. Also not very good identifying the type of sleep. Had a Galaxy Watch for a short time and that looked way more like I was expecting it to look. Also really good at noticing the difference between laying in bed and actually sleeping.

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