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]

@rbittman Garmin's BB is mostly based on HRV and if the user exercises with a chest strap, the HRV is recorded for such activities (you can easily extract it from the FIT file). There are other things contributing such as stress and sleep but it's mostly based on the HRV. It doesn't use active zone minutes in the equation. Using AZM by DRS is, in my opinion, simplifying the input data by stripping the intensity levels as AZM doesn't contain the information on the effect of the exercise and real intensity. The same number of AZM achieved by walking and achieved by running will have totally different end effects on the body.

Maybe some real-life showcase. Two runs:

10k, pace 5:40/km, AZM 115 (1x1 + 57x2)

5k, pace 4:00/km, AZM 40, (0x1 + 20x2)

So which one was really harder and left me more fatigued? The answer is in the intensity:

• For reference, I added a screenshot of my HR zones in Fitbit. I don't normally rely on it as it's way too simple for me but it shows that all my HR work on those runs falls into either Cardio or Peak (which means it's mostly x2 hence AZM values above)
• TL stands for training load measured by FirstBeat.
• ATL stands for the level of fatigue for the workout measured by TrainingPeaks.
• The AZMx2 covers 4 zones (and 6 out of 7 zones in TrainingPeaks) which are meant to have different training effects and affect the body differently. Yet, they are just compressed to a number with the same multiplier.
• The intensity of the exercise is totally lost here. I don't know how DRS is supposed to decide about recovery when input data contains no information about the level of fatigue.

Interesting that just 20min of 5k left me more fatigued than an hour of an easy run. Yet, according to AZM, the 10k was the harder one. No, it wasn't.

This is just one example of what a bad idea is to use AZM for DRS. I don't know. Maybe it works for some people, maybe for those who just start their fitness journey. For me, DRS doesn't work because it's built based on false assumptions.

[rbittman]

@@T.parker

What an excellent post. I completely agree with you. I like my Fitbit for other features and reasons (especially the sleep tracking), but I’m disappointed in the Readiness feature. Thank you for confirming what I’d suspected!

[rbittman]

Still very frustrated with the Readiness scoring. It very clearly is based 100%, or nearly so, on AZM. As you know, you can accumulate AZM easily, by walking briskly. Thus, if you walk 1.5hrs, you may get as many as 100 active zone minutes. Contrast that with a hard running workout for only 30 min. You will not get as many AZM. This is not helpful, because you will need more recovery from that run than from the longer walk! But your readiness score won’t tell you that. 
I really wish Fitbit would retool this feature to be more like the Garmin Body Battery tool. That one is based primarily on HRV and it actually works. I’m concerned that Fitbit has dropped work on this feature.