Hi there 👋
Last week, a poster shared by Andrew Flatt on LinkedIn caught my eye (see here).
The poster covers Kayla Porter’s work in evaluating the accuracy of Garmin’s spot check against ECG. In particular, as reported in the abstract, HRV was recorded simultaneously using ECG and the Forerunner 265’s optical sensor during Garmin’s 2-minute “Health Snapshot.” Measurements were obtained in three standardized positions: supine, seated, and standing. HRV values automatically generated by the Garmin application were compared with ECG-derived HRV.
The results have shown that while resting heart rate was computed correctly, the root-mean square of successive differences and standard deviation of normal RR intervals (that is, our main HRV index, or RMSSD), demonstrated greater error and underestimation as values increased, along with poor absolute and relative agreement across all positions.
The authors conclude that HRV estimates from Garmin are unsuitable for research purposes and patient or athlete monitoring based on their poor agreement with ECG, something we had seen already quite a few times in the past.
When in doubt, a good old Polar H10 is what I’d recommend for your morning measurements.
In my latest monthly recap:
The Uphill Athlete: Making Sense of the Data with Dr. Marco Altini
Environmental Temperature and HRV
Do Healthy Habits Increase HRV?
Training Talk: Tuscany Crossing
Bruna’s Trail Marathon Debut at Istria by UTMB
Thank you for reading!
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HRV4Training Pro is the ultimate platform to help you analyze and interpret your physiological data, for individuals and teams.
When using Pro, the app will also automatically recognize your account and add the Normal Range to the Baseline view, together with detected trends and additional annotations, which can help contextualizing longer-term changes.
You will also be able to pick rMSSD as the parameter to see on the homepage of the app.
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Marco holds a PhD cum laude in applied machine learning, a M.Sc. cum laude in computer science engineering, and a M.Sc. cum laude in human movement sciences and high-performance coaching. He is a certified Ultrarunning Coach.
Marco has published more than 50 papers and patents at the intersection between physiology, health, technology, and human performance.
He is co-founder of HRV4Training, Endurance Coach at Destination Unknown, advisor at Oura, guest lecturer at VU Amsterdam, and editor for IEEE Pervasive Computing Magazine. He loves running.
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