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Garmin Body Battery, Recovery Time and Training Load
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I wanted to see if folks here have much experience with Garmin's latest training and recovery technology (from FirstBeat) in their Forerunner 945, namely Body Battery, Training Load, and Recovery Time.

Thoughts on Body Battery? I find it kind of useful in understanding how I am doing after a night of sleep - am I restored or not, based on the watches estimation of the quality of sleep I got. Although there are times I have found it can give me a high score (85+) and I'm feeling quite sore or slow from a hard training session the day before.


Recovery Time - I find this to be very useful. I actually set the recovery time (e.g. 31 hrs) to display on my watch face so I can see it counting down any time I glace at my watch. It seems to be a pretty good reflection of harder or easier exertion in a workout and what kind of rest duration generally I need (I tend to just think about a recovery time of less than 24 hrs immediately after a workout is stuff I can do day after day, and the times I see a recover time of greater than 30 hrs I make note that I will probably need to take it easy, or I will be accumulating fatigue that will require some recovery, like after back to back hard training days over a weekend.)

Garmin Training Load - the feature scores how much time you train at different intensities, Low Aerobic, High Aerobic and Anaerobic. I don't find this applicable to me because I train with 80/20 and Garmin Training Load seems to consistently suggest I need more “High Aerobic” and “Anaerobic” training time in my balance with my “Low Aerobic.”

If you have a recent Garmin device and dove into the use of Body Battery, Recovery Time and Training Load, what do you think? Are they integral to your training?
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Re: Garmin Body Battery, Recovery Time and Training Load [tedtri] [ In reply to ]
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My Garmin watch (Vivoactive 4) only has Body Battery. I tried to use it for a while, but now just ignore it. It may be a good sleep quality tracker. But it'll report near-100 percent when I'm utterly shattered - similar to your experience.
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Re: Garmin Body Battery, Recovery Time and Training Load [tedtri] [ In reply to ]
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tried it for a while, found zero value. i'm really not sure this is designed for people that train at high level
plus sleeping with the wrist HR light blinking all the time is crap
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Re: Garmin Body Battery, Recovery Time and Training Load [tedtri] [ In reply to ]
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Of these three I use the Body Battery most. I find it to be a helpful shortcut to keep an eye on non-workout stress and sleep quality. Recovery Time and Training Load are things that I think I can do better than the watch using other tools. They don't seem to treat (long) run duration properly, and they get messed up too easily with segments of bad HR data (which are always a problem in winter for me).
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Re: Garmin Body Battery, Recovery Time and Training Load [MVM] [ In reply to ]
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MVM wrote:
Of these three I use the Body Battery most. I find it to be a helpful shortcut to keep an eye on non-workout stress and sleep quality. Recovery Time and Training Load are things that I think I can do better than the watch using other tools. They don't seem to treat (long) run duration properly, and they get messed up too easily with segments of bad HR data (which are always a problem in winter for me).

I use Body Battery as well. It appears to predict my recovery well.

Recovery time and Training load seem to be based on HR so if I don't have HR or the Optical sensor gets weird those numbers get weird. When I have good HR data Training Load tracks up and down with TP. I track ATL and CTL in Training Peaks

I take the recovery time as merely a suggestion.
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