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Versa inaccurately recording heart rate during exercise

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‎10-01-2020 08:02

‎10-01-2020 08:02

Hi all, I've had a Versa 2 for a while now & until late it was always good at detecting when I exercised & reflecting the heart rate zones. I have found in the last month or so it now struggles to auto-detect exercise. When I enter the details in manually (e.g. 45 mins of Circuits) it often will show I am "Below Zones" for a large part of the workout, which is nonsense given I am going very high intensity F45 classes & I know myheart rate is very high. 

 

Any ideas why this is happening & how I resolve? I am wearing the watch correctly - just seems to be a recent glitch that I can't seem to resolve. Thanks!

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‎10-01-2020 09:52

‎10-01-2020 09:52

Hi, it is very disheartening to work out and not show any zone minutes!   FitBit switched to Active Zone Minutes in the last update.  I wanted to mention that this is not a problem with active zone minutes per se as I have them with my Garmin trackers but instead is a function of how FitBit has chosen to calculate the active zone minutes.  The industry “standard” for the zone ranges is 220-age x 50%, 70% and 85% to calculate the fat burn, cardio and peak ranges.   FitBit is using a different calculation called HRR-Heart Rate Reserve, which seems to be meant for athletes or something as us mere humans can rarely achieve our heart rates at those levels and honestly I don’t think it would be healthy for us to do so.

My temporary work around is:

 

 You should be able to change the following in the app but at least on the IOS devices there is a glitch and you can’t change it.  You can change it here on your dashboard though.  

 

1.  Go to your dashboard above here and tap or click on the gear icon.

2. Tap on Settings

3. Scroll down to Heart Rate Zones and click on “custom”, I changed mine to 85% of my maximum heart rate (220 - age) x 85% - so for me 220 - 58 = 162 x 85% = 137.7, I rounded that number to 140 and saved.

4. Sync your app to your device and then tap on your account in the app and scroll down to “heart health” under settings.  You should now see the updated heart rate zones.  

You can play with the numbers above until it makes sense with your medicines and overall exertion level.  Doing this for myself, my cardio zone is now 112-129 which is inline with where my older Garmin tracker puts me and now my zone minutes add up everyday with my exercise routines.

Hope that helps as a temporary fix!

 

You can vote to have the heart rate zones calculated without the HRR heart rate reserve method here:

https://community.fitbit.com/t5/Feature-Suggestions/Get-rid-of-Heart-Rate-Reserve-in-the-Heart-Rate-...

 

Versa 2 / iPhone 8
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