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Poor heart rate data during cross country ski and weight training

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I've read the manual and forum on how to improve heart rate reading and nothing appears to help improve my HR reading during weight training and XC ski.  It hardly ever exceeds 100 bpm, which is pretty ridiculously low.  It works fine during hikes, walks, and runs.  

 

Other appears to be having the same problem as well.  Most suggestions just ask us to manually add those events, which is fine, but how do they explain the poor HR reading.  Are we missing something or is the Blaze just a piece of junk?  I am pretty irritated at the exaggerated step count, and calory burned but at least I can understand those values are estimated and it hard to distinguish wrist movement from running vs brushing teeth.  How can it miss interpret HR though?

 

Don't tell me to wear the watch higher up on the wrist, I tried that many time.

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6 REPLIES 6

If your activity involves significant wrist flexing then unfortunately the HR sensor will not be able to give you a consistent reading.  

Sense, Charge 5, Inspire 2; iOS and Android

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A warm welcome to the Community @Tvtruong and @Julia_G thanks for stopping by.

 

In this case, I recommend taking a look at this post, where you will be able to find some tips to improve the reading of your heart rate and some things that might be affecting this.

 

I hope this helps, catch you later. Woman Happy

Alejandra | Community Moderator, Fitbit

If you like something I recommended, I encourage you to mark that reply as "Best Answer". 🙂

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Oh come on Fitbit, when your advertisement said “multiple internal studies to rigorously test” [the accuracy of the wrist-mounted monitors]. I assume it includes flexing your wrist muscle or non-rhythmic movement of your wrist.  

 

Name a sport outside of running and walking that has consistently rhymic movement of your hand.  How can I return this piece of junk?

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One recent non-Fitbit studies about HR accuracy of optical wrist based HRMs:

https://community.fitbit.com/t5/Blaze/Cleveland-Clinic-HRM-accuracy-study/m-p/1876071

 

There are several reasons I can think of for inaccuracy during cross country skiing, including the previously mentioned wrist flexing and more importantly the impact of cold weather on blood flow in your wrists.

 

I'm completely unable to get accurate HR readings during weight training, the HRM often is estimating 80-90bpm when in fact I'm in low 120s and peaking in 150s during heavy repetitions. 

Aria, Fitbit MobileTrack on iOS. Previous: Flex, Force, Surge, Blaze

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The heart rate measurement seems to be accurate up to about 90/m, beyond which the measurement accuracy breaks down hopelessly. When I exercise, my heart pulse reaches up to 170, but this watch says 98 or even less, grossly inaccurate.

 

The root cause I believe is the slow pulse rate of the LED on the watch which measures the heart pulse. Fitbit designers & engineers obviously have never heard of Harry Nyquist nor Nyquist rates - Fitbit designers & engineers can Goolge "Nyquist" to educate themselves.

 

Essentially, in order to measure heart pulse rates up to 220/m (Fitbit suggests), the LED pulse rate needs to 440Hz. To be safe, it needs to be around 500Hz minimum. Hope Fitbit can update the pulse rates in future products, or better yet, release a firmware update to existing products. Otherwise this is my first and last Fitbit watch.    

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Lol.... trying to use a Fitbit for an accurate HRM reading??? I circuit train, box & do HIIT sessions regularly. I was so fed up with Blaze's inaccurate readings, I ended up returning to my Timex HRM & then I manually enter the info after my sessions. (When I workout is when I put my Blaze on the charger..) It's beyond frustrating.... I bought the Blaze for an "all in one" product, yet I've found myself continuing to use my Timex HRM, MyNetDiary for food logs and others for sleep entry. Only thing I use the Blaze for is how many calories I burn throughout the day. 

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