Unrealistic Recommended zone minutes in Readiness

[Sixtyfourfit]

I have recently changed from a Charge 3 to the 5. Have been wearing it for 3 weeks. I have just turned 69 and was on a walking holiday for the first week. So I was averaging 10 miles every day. However I was also eating my body weight in pudding (not really but didn't refuse at evening meal).

Am now back to normal activity which is about 5 miles daily along with other activities. Personal training weights on Monday, cleaning house. Singing and Rock choir. You get the picture! My Readiness is high on a daily basis. So it is telling me to do some intense exercise. Now I appreciate that the focus is to encourage people to exercise. However my concern is the recommendation that I try arms exceed 300+ zone minutes in a day.

So I did my 3 mile run and it has rewarded me with 78 zone minutes today. So I have still to do a LOT of activity to get to my 300+ before bed tonight.

I am questioning that recommendation for 2 reasons.

1. I do not think that this is taking my actual age into account.

2. Many people including myself, have an addictive personality. (I recognise and fight this). However many are addicted to exercise and giving such a target may result in people pushing themselves too much, causing injury etc.

I agree a high target should be set but mine is suggesting that I am in a higher heart rate zone for over 5 hours in each day. 

[JohnnyRow]

Where did you get recommendation of 300+ zone minutes per day?  The recommendation default is 150 per week, broken down to 22 per day.

[Sixtyfourfit]

When I click onto the readiness tab it opens another detail showing. Activity, recent sleep and heart rate variability. Under that it has Recommendation and today's was 304 zone minutes. It even sats under the 304 - go over this number today!! 

[JohnnyRow]

Wow! I had no idea the readiness recommendation would go that high.

I'm no expert on the Daily Readiness score (and doubt anyone here is), but here's my guess:

  It looks at your recent sleep & heart rate variability and tries to judge how your body is handling the amount of exercise you have been getting.  For you, I'm guessing it sees you have been getting plenty of sleep and you heart rate variability is high, at least for your range, so it figures your body could handle even more exercise.  If my interpretation is correct, it is saying your body could handle even more, but is not taking into account other factors such as any medical health recommendations, or the fact you probably don't want to exercise all day long.

Another suggestion on phone app:

tap profile pic > SETTINGS: Activity & Wellness > Daily Activity to see your Zone Minutes goal weekly and daily.  By default they are 150 per week and 22 per day.  Check that they have not gotten set to something much higher than that.

The American CDC and I think it is American Heart Association recommend at least 300 zone minutes per week (not day), and likely would agree even more is better but I doubt would recommend anything close to 300 a day.

Sorry, I don't think I had much, if any, helpful to say there, but I would ignore those "recommendations".

[JohnnyRow]

---

@Sixtyfourfit wrote:

When I click onto the readiness tab it opens another detail showing. Activity, recent sleep and heart rate variability. Under that it has Recommendation and today's was 304 zone minutes. It even sats under the 304 - go over this number today!! 

---

If possible I would be interested to see a screen shot from your phone of that, not that I don't believe you, but I would like to show some others to see what they make of it.  I realize not everyone can post pictures here, though.

[Sixtyfourfit]

I decided to test what would happen if I did achieve the recommendation minutes. So yesterday I did 312 minutes when it recommended 304. Today my score is 82 and this is the screen shot. It doesn't fit completely. 

 

[Sixtyfourfit]