Anybody use a chest heart rate monitor?

[zacattack]

Thinking about getting one for training. Been using my iwatch but I sometimes wonder how accurate that is. Anybody got a model or brand that they like?

 

[Mike Islander]

Wahoo Fitness. I use for training, even in the pool. Records hours of heart rate so you don't need a phone or any external device during the workout.

 

[zacattack]

The ticker or tickerx?

 

[P Carter]

I use one, it syncs to my suunto watch (Suunto ambit2r). It’s consistent, and I think accurate—I suppose o can’t really tell if it’s accurate because I don’t have anything else to measure it by, but the zones correlate to how I’m feeling. It’s been a very helpful training tool to keep me slow when I’m supposed to be slow and fast enough when I’m supposed to be fast.

I think that the wrist-based monitors are largely not accurate or consistent enough for training purposes.

In the cold it takes awhile to get the contacts on there right, I usually have to stop 1/2 mile in and lick my hand to get the contacts wet.

 

[Mike Islander]

The ticker or tickerx?

X

 

[aron]

I have the garmin tri and happy with it. I've compared it against my wrist heart rate and they are pretty far off. The wrist heart rates are inaccurate and enough to where I've just turned it off on my watch to extend battery life.

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[Mike Islander]

I run a Garmin Forerunner 35 watch as well as the Wahoo Fitness TICKR X. The chest HRM is a bit more precise, but the wrist is good enough to monitor hi/low/average for workouts. Definitely key is to wear the watch as advised by Garmin.

 

[*zap*]

I also use Suunto ambit2 and chest strap, no issues and it is very good to track your heart rate. The suunto program for tracking your workouts is also very good.

 

[marcjstevens]

Polar is good. You can mostly tell HR zones by how hard you’re breathing and if you are able to breath from your nose or not.


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[zacattack]

Polar is good. You can mostly tell HR zones by how hard you’re breathing and if you are able to breath from your nose or not.


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Yeah I’ve been reading training for new alpinism and it talks a lot about this, thought I would get a monitor to track as well.

 

[P Carter]

Yeah I’ve been reading training for new alpinism and it talks a lot about this, thought I would get a monitor to track as well.

Training for a season or so with a heartrate monitor was valuable, to me, to correllate perceived effort with heart rate zones. By and large, my conclusions weren't surprising--perceived effort correllated pretty well to the heartrate zones--but there were a few surprises. For example, heartrate was much higher than perceived effort when running downhill. That one is still interesting to me, still haven't quite figured out why.

There was also a non-insignificant increase in heartrate while running trails versus running roads that likewise was not reflected in perceived exertion.

In addition, I found that heartrate increases (like many things in life) weren't linear; I would have a perceived effort much higher than heartrate for a period of time, maybe 10 minutes, just enough to think that you are in phenomenol shape,and then the heartrate would catch up to, and rapidly exceed, perceived exertion. All very interesting stuff to observe.

Now that I trained a few seasons with a HR monitor, it's easier to go by perceived exertion taking into account the things learned running with a monitor.

 

[marcjstevens]

Yeah I’ve been reading training for new alpinism and it talks a lot about this, thought I would get a monitor to track as well.

Go for it man! You might also check out one that can measure HRV. Then you could help recover better using breathing techniques


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[MiiisterAnderson]

I use a Polar watch and chest strap. It's at least half a decade old but it continues to work well. I've found that it's accurate when compared to manually measuring although I question the calories burned algorithm. While I tend to lift heavy (5x5 type program), I'm not convinced that I burn 1-1.2K calories an hour doing that.

P Carter hit some good points, a HRM helps you understand how hard you are working and where you are in your fitness journey.

 

[keeganwann]

I have the Garmin tri. It’s great. Just replaced the batteries.


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[*zap*]

So, a hrm is a huge asset if your working to expand your aerobic capacity. Low gear is our most useful gear since it can be used for very long durations. My understanding is that the best way to train this is to do very frequent, long duration and very low intensity aerobic exercise that never reaches a heart rate which induces release of glucose to be used to produce atp. Without a monitor it is difficult to be aware of exact peaks reached in heart rate. Once you reach a certain heart rate and glucose is introduced into the mix your body no longer primarily just uses the fat burning system for atp production.
My goal for aerobic capacity training is to watch, over a period of time, my average heart rate for the same exercise sessions drop. Lower heart rate for the same exercise session means ability to go longer or to go faster for the same amount of time.

Lower heart rate for the same exercise means higher aerobic capacity heart rate which is how people place real high in marathons......they can go longer at a higher pace because they are still in the fat burning zone rather than in the glucose burning zone.

This aerobic capacity is very, very trainable......but you need to see your current heart rate so you can stay in the low level 1 zone and never peak above that rate. Obviously, you will want to train @ a higher heart rate occasionally but not when focusing on increasing aerobic capacity.

When your hunting you are very rarely keeping a high heart rate for longer periods of time so I would imagine the low gear is what would be most beneficial to train. Once that is improved to where you want it then some higher heart rate training and lots of muscular endurance training with a lower heart rate would be what I would do along with continuing improving the low end gear.

This is my understanding of this stuff @ this time.

 

[mtwarden]

if Santa is good to me, I'm going to get a Garmin Instinct Solar watch and a HRM to go with it

 

[CoffeeGoat]

So, a hrm is a huge asset if your working to expand your aerobic capacity. Low gear is our most useful gear since it can be used for very long durations. My understanding is that the best way to train this is to do very frequent, long duration and very low intensity aerobic exercise that never reaches a heart rate which induces release of glucose to be used to produce atp. Without a monitor it is difficult to be aware of exact peaks reached in heart rate. Once you reach a certain heart rate and glucose is introduced into the mix your body no longer primarily just uses the fat burning system for atp production.
My goal for aerobic capacity training is to watch, over a period of time, my average heart rate for the same exercise sessions drop. Lower heart rate for the same exercise session means ability to go longer or to go faster for the same amount of time.

Lower heart rate for the same exercise means higher aerobic capacity heart rate which is how people place real high in marathons......they can go longer at a higher pace because they are still in the fat burning zone rather than in the glucose burning zone.

This aerobic capacity is very, very trainable......but you need to see your current heart rate so you can stay in the low level 1 zone and never peak above that rate. Obviously, you will want to train @ a higher heart rate occasionally but not when focusing on increasing aerobic capacity.

When your hunting you are very rarely keeping a high heart rate for longer periods of time so I would imagine the low gear is what would be most beneficial to train. Once that is improved to where you want it then some higher heart rate training and lots of muscular endurance training with a lower heart rate would be what I would do along with continuing improving the low end gear.

This is my understanding of this stuff @ this time.

This is something I've actually noticed during my training. I tend to do heavy weightlifting and crossfit, with very limited longer duration low effort type work. What I've found is it's challenging to work on aerobic capacity in this way because you almost always exceed the threshold immediately.
During the first Covid shutdown I did lots of longer runs and lighter/longer work because I just didn't have access to equipment, I noticed more improvement (via my Garmin forerunner) on my resting heart rate and VO2 max in just a month. The heart rate strap definitely helped dial in that improvement. Unfortunately with life, work, kids, etc I have no idea when I'll have that much time in the future to work like that again and I did lose strength, but it was a fun experiment.

 

[hermantherugger]

Which generation apple watch do you have? I watched this vid when I was considering apple vs garmin, it helped clear things up a little Apple Watch vs Garmin Instinct HR & Review

 

[*zap*]

This is something I've actually noticed during my training. I tend to do heavy weightlifting and crossfit, with very limited longer duration low effort type work. What I've found is it's challenging to work on aerobic capacity in this way because you almost always exceed the threshold immediately.
During the first Covid shutdown I did lots of longer runs and lighter/longer work because I just didn't have access to equipment, I noticed more improvement (via my Garmin forerunner) on my resting heart rate and VO2 max in just a month. The heart rate strap definitely helped dial in that improvement. Unfortunately with life, work, kids, etc I have no idea when I'll have that much time in the future to work like that again and I did lose strength, but it was a fun experiment.

Strength vs endurance is always a hard thing to find the happy medium for, add in the quest for lower body fat% and its like looking for the holy grail. Lower heart rate @ rest and during activity is hard to beat thou.

 

[Mule3006Elk]

Great training tool especially when you are training in specific HR zones.
You will love it!