Heart Rate Monitor??

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latinavegana
latinavegana Posts: 10 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
Hey all :) Hope you're all having a good day.

I'm looking for a HRM that is accurate (a chest strap would be better than a watch). I bought a watch on Amazon that had great reviews and people kept saying it was accurate, but after an hour workout involving weights and HIIT, it's reading that I only burned 30 calories (yeah, ok).

Any suggestions would be SUPER appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

Replies

  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,269 Member
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    Unfortunately, HRMs measure heartbeats, but only estimate calories.

    They can be very inaccurate estimators of calories for anything other than moderate intensity steady state near-pure cardio. They can be truly terrible at estimating activities like strength training or high-intensity intervals. They are likely to estimate a same-calorie exercise very differently for a fit person vs. a beginner.

    Your best bet is to learn what they're good and bad at estimating, and take estimates with a grain of salt.

    Best advice I have would be to stick with recognized quality brands: Polar, Garmin, Suunto, Wahoo, Fitbit, etc.

    I've used a Polar HRM (chest belt with low-end Polar watch to aggregate the data & estimate from it) in the past. Now I use a Garmin fitness tracker (Vivoactive 3) with wrist-based HRM, and add an Ant+ chest belt (mine is also from Garmin) for exercise during which a wrist monitor tends to lose arm contact (rowing, in my case).

    It does OK, IMO, for most things. I normally use the MFP database estimate for strength training, as I think it's more appropriate than a HRM estimate. I'd use a power-metered estimate if I had one for any activity that meters accurately. (My Garmin and my Concept 2 rowing machine aren't usually far enough apart to worry over, though.)

    Best wishes!
  • SnifterPug
    SnifterPug Posts: 746 Member
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    I use Myzone, which is a chest strap monitor. I find the calorie estimates to be reasonably accurate, though they can only be a ball park figure at best.
  • steveko89
    steveko89 Posts: 2,217 Member
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    I've used three different HR monitors (Polar, Under Armour, and Apple Watch) and was dissapointed with the accuracy of all three. The best result I found was by using a TDEE calculation spreadsheet I found in the wiki on r/fitness. It does required daily weighing and accurate/comprehensive logging data but the resulting TDEE number have been spot on.
  • The_Enginerd
    The_Enginerd Posts: 3,982 Member
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    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    Unfortunately, HRMs measure heartbeats, but only estimate calories.

    They can be very inaccurate estimators of calories for anything other than moderate intensity steady state near-pure cardio. They can be truly terrible at estimating activities like strength training or high-intensity intervals.

    Emphasis on the above point. The algorithms used by HRMs for estimating calories burned are only valid for cardiovascular activities. The mechanisms that increase heart rate for weight training are different than the increased heart rate due to cardiovascular exercise.

    An MFP user in the field has a good blog post detailing this and the reasons behind it:
    https://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/Azdak/view/hrms-cannot-count-calories-during-strength-training-17698
  • tapwaters
    tapwaters Posts: 428 Member
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    I use a Garmin chest strap in conjunction with my Garmin Forerunner. They both work FANTASTIC and I highly recommend Garmin.
  • sijomial
    sijomial Posts: 19,811 Member
    edited January 2020
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    Heartbeats and energy expenditure have a very weak correlation with a very high chance of being badly exaggerated for "weights & HIIT" - don't bother unless you really, really want to know your heart rate during those exercises.

    If you are doing endurance cardio a HRM can be a valuable training aid but otherwise don't waste your money on something that won't give you the data you are looking for.

  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,269 Member
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    The_Enginerd wrote: »
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    Unfortunately, HRMs measure heartbeats, but only estimate calories.

    They can be very inaccurate estimators of calories for anything other than moderate intensity steady state near-pure cardio. They can be truly terrible at estimating activities like strength training or high-intensity intervals.

    Emphasis on the above point. The algorithms used by HRMs for estimating calories burned are only valid for cardiovascular activities. The mechanisms that increase heart rate for weight training are different than the increased heart rate due to cardiovascular exercise.

    An MFP user in the field has a good blog post detailing this and the reasons behind it:
    https://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/Azdak/view/hrms-cannot-count-calories-during-strength-training-17698

    That's a great link. Here's another that is a little broader about HRMs and their limitations:

    https://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/Azdak/view/the-real-facts-about-hrms-and-calories-what-you-need-to-know-before-purchasing-an-hrm-or-using-one-21472

    I'm not saying I think they're useless for calorie estimates: I use one. Using them with knowledge of their limitations is a better route IMO than treating them as gospel. There are a lot of cases in modern life where people trust electronic devices' outputs more than the underlying technology fully merits. This is one.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,269 Member
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    tapwaters wrote: »
    I use a Garmin chest strap in conjunction with my Garmin Forerunner. They both work FANTASTIC and I highly recommend Garmin.

    I love my Garmin (Vivoactive 3 + chest strap, in my case), and wear the watch every day (the chest strap during selected exercise). I'm a huge Garmin fan, and would recommend an appropriate device in their line to anyone. I had a pre-HRM Forerunner (205) that I used for years for speed/pace/distance data. (It still works, after years in regular use, BTW.) Garmin's also been good with keeping up with (and even introducing) technology improvements. Great brand.

    The calorie estimates based on HR still have limitations, because HR has limitations for estimating heart rate, as a underlying fact.

    Like the exercise estimates working pretty well, Garmin's all-day calorie (TDEE) estimates work really well for the majority of people. Those people happen to be close to the average of the population in research studies on which the devices' estimates are based, and happily the typical differences among people tend to be relatively small (small standard deviation, in statistical terms), so they'll be close for most people. Good stuff.

    Nonetheless, based on a year of wearing it, my Garmin under-estimates my all-day calorie burn by several hundred calories. (MFP does the same thing, BTW.) I know this because I've been logging regularly and carefully on MFP, and monitoring my weight, for nearly 5 years now. Why does this happen? I'm one of the few people who, for some reason(s), is further from those population averages. Why am I further from the averages? I don't really know. But it's true.

    That's the nature of algorithms based on statistical information. They're plenty close enough for most people, a little off (high or low) for a few, and way off for a very, very few.

    tl; dr: Garmin makes great devices in this product space: Highly recommended. It's still useful to understand loosely how the devices work, and what their limitations are likely to be.
  • tapwaters
    tapwaters Posts: 428 Member
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    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    The_Enginerd wrote: »
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    Unfortunately, HRMs measure heartbeats, but only estimate calories.

    They can be very inaccurate estimators of calories for anything other than moderate intensity steady state near-pure cardio. They can be truly terrible at estimating activities like strength training or high-intensity intervals.

    Emphasis on the above point. The algorithms used by HRMs for estimating calories burned are only valid for cardiovascular activities. The mechanisms that increase heart rate for weight training are different than the increased heart rate due to cardiovascular exercise.

    An MFP user in the field has a good blog post detailing this and the reasons behind it:
    https://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/Azdak/view/hrms-cannot-count-calories-during-strength-training-17698

    That's a great link. Here's another that is a little broader about HRMs and their limitations:

    https://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/Azdak/view/the-real-facts-about-hrms-and-calories-what-you-need-to-know-before-purchasing-an-hrm-or-using-one-21472

    I'm not saying I think they're useless for calorie estimates: I use one. Using them with knowledge of their limitations is a better route IMO than treating them as gospel. There are a lot of cases in modern life where people trust electronic devices' outputs more than the underlying technology fully merits. This is one.

    That's an excellent blog post, thanks for sharing!
  • NorthCascades
    NorthCascades Posts: 10,970 Member
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    A heart rate monitor should accurately monitor your heart rate. You shouldn't expect it to know much about calories, that's not how our bodies work.
  • rodnichols69
    rodnichols69 Posts: 83 Member
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    For a long time I used a $30 HR strap and an app on my phone. HR straps can connect to your phone via blue tooth or ANT.
  • aokoye
    aokoye Posts: 3,495 Member
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    rodnichols69 wrote: »
    For a long time I used a $30 HR strap and an app on my phone. HR straps can connect to your phone via blue tooth or ANT.

    And to expand on this a tad, most phones don't support ANT+ without a dongle. The more recent exceptions being a number of the Samsung Galaxy phones. You can see if your device is compatible here. Given that more and more devices that broadcast ANT+ are also broadcasting Bluetooth, I now lean towards sensors that support both protocols. When I bought my most recent HR strap, being Bluetooth and ANT+ compatible was a non-negotiable requirement for me.

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