Heart rate - Wrist vs Arm vs Chest

[intern]

Another vote for chest here. When I use my Fenix 5, I often go hard running and get an avg of 130s when I know it is closer to 150+; I've also seen a max of 192 on the Fenix when I have never seen anything higher than 180 with my chest monitor. So the wrist is 'handy' (har har har) but not accurate. It's pretty great for tracking your rest HR though when you're sleeping...

[Red Bird]

I always thought my Fenix 3 wrist HR is pretty accurate; until last night

I headed out for a late night run last night and decided to push a little. It felt like I went pretty hard and my speed was waaaay above my normal pace. However; when I got back HR reported an avg of 139bpm; where my max HR is about 185-190bpm. Looking at the data, there was nothing erratic about the HR (ie, not sudden spikes and recordings of 0 bpm); just a nice consistent band between 120 and 154bpm). So, either I'm am fit as anything (my boep seems to suggest otherwise) or HR was measured inaccurately. Will do a few more tests with chest strap and old faithul Garmin 310xt as backup devices and see how the results correlate.

Cooler temperatures help to keep our core body temps down, so we can push ourselves harder. Lower HR could very well be a result. I had a few Strava PR’s in 2017 from a night ride, with lower HR than usual, on an aluminium bike. Only recently broke those PR’s on my new carbon bike during a day ride, with higher HR.

[ChristoErasmus]

Thanks for sharing everyone.

 

I appreciate your time and effort to respond.

[ChristoErasmus]

I did a real world test, on the road and MTB, riding and racing. The results can be viewed in my feedback.

 

https://community.bikehub.co.za/topic/161729-wrist-based-hr-vs-chest-strap/page-1

 

 

BTW, a simple search using the search bar, typing in keywords can render a few results about wrist-based HR. Give it a try, putting your own keywords and see what pops up. It’s a great tool that is often under utilized.

 

Thanks for sharing your data... but really - keep your sarcastic crap to yourself.

[EddieV]

I have used an Apple Watch hr on the wrist, a Polar chest strap and for the last year a Polar OH1 over the bicep.

I now exclusively use the arm strap.

It never misses a beat. I use it in conjunction with a Polar m400. For swimming I record directly onto it and download afterwards.

The OH1 just became Ant+ compliant with its latest firmware upgrade which is a big plus too.

[IceCreamMan]

My experience using both wrist and strap is that the wrist is accurate, however the readings are slightly delayed. Average HR , max rate are almost identical but with a 20 second lag on the wrist, (more or less.)

 

Guess the tech depends on a number of factors as the results are all over the place looking at this thread but for me it works well enough that I threw out the strap etc. 

 

But I don't need 100% accuracy, if I did I would train in a laboratory. 

[Frosty]

Thanks for sharing your data... but really - keep your sarcastic crap to yourself.

Easy there on aggression. Perhaps you should take the search advice as it’s intended to be... advice.

 

I don’t have to post about the search bar if I don’t think it will help you or someone else, but I do. Your post count was low, and it’s offered as assistance. You aren’t the first one to post a similar response when someone offers help on the search bar.