Heart rate monitor for hiit circuit training

jennygutt
jennygutt Posts: 41 Member
edited November 2024 in Fitness and Exercise
Hello all. I'm trying to get more accurate with my CICO. I have been doing some fitness blender YouTube workouts. They say HIIT but from what I've read probably more like circuit training. I want to know how many calories i burn during a session. Will a charge 2 Fitbit that has a heart rate monitor give me a pretty close accurate reading of how many calories i burn with each workout video session? Will it for my elliptical and treadmill running also? Be i have my MFP set to no activity and then manually add my daily exercise and i want to be as accurate as i can.

Replies

  • AnvilHead
    AnvilHead Posts: 18,343 Member
    Heart rate monitors don't actually measure calories burned. They measure your heart rate and then provide an estimate of calories burned using your personal data in an algorithm. The algorithms used differ from manufacturer to manufacturer, but they're based upon steady state cardiovascular exercise. So the further you go from steady state cardio, the less accurate the algorithms are. HIIT and circuit training are both quite different from steady state cardio, so the data from an HRM won't be as valuable/accurate for those kind of exercises (same goes for strength training).

    Garmin has licensed a technology called Firstbeat for their devices, which claims to be more accurate than traditional algorithms. I haven't dug into the science/studies behind it enough to say whether that's true or not.
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
    Firstbeat attempts to use HRV to sense where the breathing rate is. Breathing in, HR slightly up, out it's slightly down.

    If high HR and high breathing rate - then indeed you are needing the oxygen for high calorie burn (well, not always).
    If high HR and normal breathing rate - then HR elevated for other reasons.

    It's decent theory and couple studies - that can improve the accuracy of the aerobic steady state - and attempt to improve the inaccuracy of the non-steady-state.

    As you can imagine - the normal HR-based calorie burn formulas are making some assumptions (HRmax, VO2max), and so does the formulas for breathing rate (based on max ventilation from again estimated VO2max).
    So YMMV. Their attempt at getting better VO2max estimate is probably the real kicker to the improvement. Same as nicer Polar's, though different formula.

    So just as you put it @AnvilHead - you can still move into the outer part of the range and have more inaccuracy - it just attempts to improve the range and when it's valid.

    @jennygutt - Most of the non-"HIIT" videos are calisthenics that I've seen, not circuit training.
    The difference is usually the reps (CT up to 15 usually with weight to make that hard, other routines go over 15 easily and worn out not by weight but by pace of movement, and shorter breaks between movements), and the rests.

    Many find the Fitbit type of light-based HRM loses accuracy as HR goes higher, you might not even get accurate readings with high HR. Some do though.
    But that type of device likely great for treadmill and elliptical - unless you go making it interval sessions.

    Just log the "hiit" from the database as calisthenics. If you have Fitbit, use their database - better math for calorie burn.
  • jennygutt
    jennygutt Posts: 41 Member
    Ok thank y'all for your help. I been logging hiit as circuit but ill start logging it as Calisthenics instead. Probably get the charge 2 for my eliptical and treadmill days to be more accuurate there.
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