Sense - How do I interpret daily readiness score?

[PumpkinPi]

Can someone please help shed some light on the daily readiness score. It doesn't make sense at all...most days I have a good sleep score because I slept enough, but my sleep always averages at below my target.

And now today, it is showing my activity intensity is high so I'm not ready to exercise, yet my total active minutes for the last week was 1 minute 2 days ago...

It just feels to me the scores are getting all mixed up like they've confused sleep with activity 🤷🏻‍:female_sign:. All other functions and tiles track fine. Just readiness that completely confused me.

Moderator Edit: Clarified subject

[t.parker]

There is a dedicated thread here:
https://community.fitbit.com/t5/Mind-Body/Share-Your-Daily-Readiness-Score-Here/m-p/5008955#M18611

But shortly I agree with you. The DRS makes not much sense at all. I believe this is because of averaging data over a few days (and Fitbit loves averaging) and taking too many simplified components into the equation. I don't understand why AZM contributes to the activity level as you may get ie. 90AZM easy way and hard way and despite the same number, it may bring totally different impact on your body - single number metric is too simple and blurs the data. The same about HRV - only measurement done shortly after waking up should be used (3-5min). Averaging the whole night blurs data again. For me, DRS shows always a very high score labelled "Excellent" even when I need to recover after running races. I tested  DRS, doesn't give me anything useful and I don't know how to use it (and Fitbit isn't giving any details) so I stopped checking it.

[SunsetRunner]

I came here looking for more information about it too.  I don't understand this score.  It's giving me a 1 today.  My sleep score was 91 last night.  My workouts have been super light but it's telling me I "went above and beyond with activity."  Does this score and the metrics it uses change as I become more fit?  Because if I sit on my butt as many times as it tells me to, I won't get any workouts done at all.

[enacavin]

I'm wondering if mine is so low because I've lowered my resting heartrate (over time, down from 90's to 65 range on average). So now any activity that increases my heartrate is thought of as "intense" activity, which may be throwing it off. 

I'm going to disregard these stats for now, and revisit in a few months after I have some more consistent heart rates recorded. It seems as our health improves the algorithm isn't keeping up. 

[Hingane]

Hi

My score is always too high, like today it was 67. I had a bad night 5 hours sleep and i have been doing excersies almost every day and still my score is so high. I dont know how good this system is for crossfit and powerlfting because my muscles nervous system is done for the day.

[eezeepee]

I'm curious what your readiness screen breakdown looks like. Also, tapping the information "Activity", "Sleep" and "Heart rate variability" gives it's reasoning for the score. It seems appropriate for me because after doing 3 days in a row, I went down to a 1.

 

[eezeepee]

If you're hitting your heart zone activity range, then yes it's considered intense activity. You could always adjust it to be higher but that doesn't sound like an accurate thing to do. 

[Hingane]

My Suunto gives me very low score using chest strap

[eezeepee]

Activity "light" when you have worked out everyday is definitely suspicious. Tap that and see why it thinks it's light. Maybe you're not hitting the zone levels? Apparently with wrist monitors it can be difficult to get proper heart rate readings with weight training.

[t.parker]

@Hingane my guess is that using AZM is a problem for the algorithm as it doesn't take into account the real intensity of your exercise. There is a big difference between 60 minutes of low-intense exercise and 30 minutes of exhausting HIIT (which will give you also 60min AZM if you hit the x2 multiplier). AZM is not a way of indicating the activity level for readiness because a single number doesn't contain a crucial piece of information - how intense you went. I had a very similar output from DRS and my activity level was always marked as low because of AZM. One example is when on Nov 28 I ran 21.1km. My AZM got multiplied x2 giving me 221min. And that's fine but then, I spent lots of time over my threshold due to running uphills. AZM sees no difference between tempo, threshold, and anaerobic (+neuromuscular) effort. The last two contribute to muscles breakdown. In other words, you may get certain AZM with various ways of exercising. AZM doesn't contain any data that says the activity was a huge effort or not. This way next day you are perfectly ready after a long sleep (on 29 Nov I received excellent readiness, just my body didn't feel that). The same activity was evaluated by FirstBeat as "overreaching" and "very demanding" and indicated some anaerobic gains (muscle breakdown), Strava labeled my run relative effort in red as "Massive" (that was a race). Only Fitbit didn't notice the difference between running a half-marathon and walking to the store to buy rolls for breakfast and according to AZM marked my activity level as light. If I ran slower, staying in tempo zone, below threshold (Fitbit's cardio) I would gain AZM x2 as well but the run would be longer and I wouldn't feel that exhausted in the end. But I would get more AZM and maybe I'd get a Moderate level of activity despite not being that tired (staying below the threshold would turn my run into pleasant endurance activity)🤣. The algorithm is flawed because it's based on incorrect assumptions. That's why I stopped checking DRS because it's just a magic number based on pseudo-science.

[eezeepee]

@t.parker Yes it's definitely using AZM.

[Hingane]

Big thanks to you parker and eezeepee for helping me with this.

Yes i know that wrist is not so good indicator for heart monitoring but i was hoping that EDA scan and sleep metrics would compenside this readiness score.

[t.parker]

@eezeepee AZM (AZM is also pseudo-science) is like lossy compression. It throws away lots of data. If you get AZM you can't "decode" that number into a more detailed breakdown. This information is lost. And this affects DRS quite a lot. Mostly, sporty people will be affected by that. I did a quick "simulation" of my recent 21km run from yesterday (a little less effort on this one than on November one) and shifted Strava pace zones to make sure I would stay in the tempo zone (HR lot lower but still  AZMx2) the majority of the time. That lowered my pace from real 5:08 to 6:30 and extended the time to approximately 02:17:09. I shifted paces so ~5min of that time will fall into "fat burn" (after shifting zones). So lets compute AZM: 02:12:09 x2 = 120x2+ 12x2 + 5x1 = 269AZM. That would be a tempo/endurance run. The real AZM for this one was 222. So now see what's going to happen. By stretching the time of activity I lower the intensity of it. Yet, just staying in the cardio zone Fitbit gives me the multiplier x2 for AZM and I get 47 extra minutes "free" not sweating too much. I end up less tired (the original time was 01:48:25) doing slightly worse performance and adding only roughly half an hour to the run. But according to AZM the longer run will be seen as more intense than shorter which was way more demanding. That's why AZM doesn't work. The information about the intensity is gone.

[eezeepee]

Got it. It all makes sense. It sounds like its obviously not something useful for a serious athlete or training. Just like how BMI isn't either. But both can still be useful for the average person.

[t.parker]

@eezeepee I can add even more "confusion". If you have a bad night of sleep it will affect your HRV negatively. Fitbit however uses a sleep score and HRV as separate components as if they share no dependency, which isn't true. This way you may get penalized twice for the same thing. Very intense activity will affect your HRV, too. There are dependencies that prevent treating each component separately. It's a common issue of DRS which isn't based solely on HRV. Most of the athletes who religiously follow the readiness reject all solutions which add extra components. Fitbit's DRS seems to be taking into account data from past days, too. That's not exactly what readiness is. It's more like a recovery score, just up-side-down. I really struggle to understand how DRS works, what it represents, and how to use it. Usually, readiness is important not for the user, because everyone really knows how they feel in the morning, no need for the watch to tell it. Readiness is useful for coaches so they can plan training sessions more efficiently. Fitbit DRS however isn't well defined, the explanation doesn't tell me anything. It gives me a number, says it's excellent (I have never received anything else than "Excellent readiness") and that's it. I agree that most people want a single number without much more details but then this could be as well a random magic number meaning whatever.

[Hingane]

Just like you said @t.parker "Readiness is useful for coaches so they can plan training sessions more efficiently." For me this is important when im planning my training days and it would be useful when looking back that i can see how my week or month has been. I listen to my body exercises and do my exercises how i feel.

[Hingane]

I would say that im fine tuning my exercises, so this why i would like to have "good" inputs.

[t.parker]

@Hingane why don't you use EliteHRV then? The app is made exactly for that purpose and it doesn't blur data. EliteHRV allows you to tag results (for example you can label results with training, sickness, etc.) which helps to understand it while you put it into the context. Also, it uses only HRV which can be easily verified (that's another problem I see about Fitbit's DRS - there is no way to verify the quality of components). I've been using it for some time but didn't find following the readiness beneficial as I tend to listen to my body rather than waiting for any app or watch to tell me whether I'm ready 😄 Some days with the lowest readiness were my best (like achieving PBs). Many coaches and athletes however use it on daily basis. Also, checking HRV after workouts, before, or even during may give you a better indication of levels of fatigue. If you look for such a solution, EliteHRV is pretty much the fitness industry standard (the app is free).

[Hingane]

@t.parker Do you mean EliteHRV another device than fitbit?

Why i choose fitbit was mainly for it sleeptracking but now that i have used it for couple months i can see it flaws, but still its sleeptracking is one of the best. Other devices are so **ahem** expensive 😄

[t.parker]

@Hingane EliteHRV is the app for iOS and Android but it will require a chest strap like PolarH10 (there is a good reason for that, there's not much trust in reading R-R intervals from the wrist). A morning readiness test is done shortly after you wake up. Just put the chest strap on and do a 2-minute test (no need for more data than that, it's also well explained in the app). The EliteHRV app is free. I used to keep my chest strap at my bed side and was doing test first thing after opening my eyes. It became my habit but at some point, I just realized that I didn't need it. Anyway, as I said, lots of athletes use EliteHRV almost religiously.