Heart rate not steady / constant

My heart rate graph is always very much up and down. When I see other peoples it’s always very smooth. I’m using a wahoo tickr vía TrainerRoad iOS app. I thought it was a bad strap so got wahoo to replace it and it is still the same….


How long are those workouts? Longer workouts will make graphs appear more steady.

I went through two TICKRs (1 free replacement) in 6 months before giving up and getting a Polar Verity Sense, which has been absolutely faultless for the last 10 months.

I really like the fact that it’s rechargeable :+1:

These are both one hour

Is something interfering with your wifi/ant + causing dropouts. TR support is usually quite good at sorting that out; contact them.

When you burp and do other things like that it causes the HR reading to miss beats. Your HR graph will artificially drop and come back up. Probably something like this is happening

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Sometimes I get a small jump in heart rate when I sit up and when I’m eating. Maybe it’s the heart rate Bluetooth connection like stated above. Polar strap has also been my goto after using garmin straps. Garmin heart rate monitor and strap only worked for me for about a year. Polars heart rate monitor with strap has been rolling for 2 years with battery changes.

As mentioned above I would definitely look into the hardware side of things again and do your analyse with a steady state workout. See if you can loan a Garmin or something else for comparison.

My free replacement Tickr is still in the box. I had went for a Polar H10 before it was delivered. The Verity Sense looks neat :+1:

@Skc1990 My TickR strap was good but after a battery change I suspected similar to you and bought a replacement strap. When I still got issues like yours I realised it was the actual unit and after reading reviews I settled on the Polar 10 whilst I was waiting for a new TickR under warranty. I chose to avoid further TickR exasperations though and kept it in the box.

I had Tickr X (2nd gen) + Wahoo Headwind fan configured to blow harder when HR increases. During some hard VO2max workout Tickr went down and cooling with it. I was still able to finish workout, powered by strong feelings toward Tickr, though :slight_smile:

Never again.

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I’m going to go with connection dropouts as the drops in HR seem to coincide with drops in power (on the first graph at least).

I’ve found heart rate chest straps in general to be very inconsistent… quite possibly due to the way they fit to my chest/torso. I had a Tickr (first gen) for a time and was constantly dealing with connection drops. My suggestion… if you want to stick in the Wahoo ecosystem at least, would be to get your hands on the Tickr FIT (the arm band one). I find mine to be VERY accurate and is NEVER spiky like this.

In the beginning of wearing it, I DID notice an occasional drop to 0 for 1-2 seconds from time to time, but ended up attributing that to bending my arm to take on fuel (i was wearing my arm band on my left forearm, which is also my dominant arm and the one I use when fueling. To rectify that, I started wearing the strap above the elbow, just below my bicep. In this location, the dropouts have stopped when taking on fuel and there has been no noticeable different in HR readings in this location.

My 2 cents!

Yeah. I stick it on my left bicep and forget all about it. When I first got it I rode with it and a TICKR a couple of times, and (when the TICKR was working :roll_eyes:) there was basically no difference between them. At that point both TICKRs were retired.

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How fit are you? How much training experience? Have you been hitting it again after an extended break from training/riding? How well rested are you prior these workouts?

Nothing really jumps out to me as being very odd. Your HR goes up (in general) when the power demand goes up and down and when the power demand goes down. I see a few spots where it does look like there is a delay in response but that may be due to fatigue.

In the first trace every big drop in power is followed quickly by a big dip in HR and then a gradual rise when you bring your power back up.

I don’t see anything to be too concerned about here.

I use the polar H10 chest strap and as far as I’m concerned is a great tool.