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I talk a lot - Give it a listen: http://www.fasttalklabs.com/category/fast-talk
I also give Training Advice via http://www.ForeverEndurance.com

The above poster has eschewed traditional employment and is currently undertaking the ill-conceived task of launching his own hardgoods company. Statements are not made on behalf of nor reflective of anything in any manner... unless they're good, then they count.
http://www.AGNCYINNOVATION.com

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I talk a lot - Give it a listen: http://www.fasttalklabs.com/category/fast-talk
I also give Training Advice via http://www.ForeverEndurance.com

The above poster has eschewed traditional employment and is currently undertaking the ill-conceived task of launching his own hardgoods company. Statements are not made on behalf of nor reflective of anything in any manner... unless they're good, then they count.
http://www.AGNCYINNOVATION.com

Back in my day we didn't have any of this nonsense 😁

I love having a place to discuss and see what works for how many people.

For me, the Garmin daily stress graph is key. With morning workouts, I get a big spike in the subsequent readings and then they (hopefully) slant down towards bedtime. If they don't get to blue by the evening, the next day is probably compromised. After major races (marathon, half-iron, or more) it will remain very high and almost flat for the rest of that day and probably only start tailing off the following day. High stress numbers in the evening also correlate very strongly to difficulty falling asleep and low sleep quality (sleep has always been a struggle for me).

Funnily enough, the Garmin stress graph is more accurate for me than their "recovery monitor", which will often tell me I need close to two days after a big run when I really don't.

And for anyone who wants to say "just go by feel", this helps me distinguish between "feeling lazy and need to get out the door and will feel better after 10 minutes" and "yeah, I'm a little overcooked, take today very light".

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The point is, ladies and gentleman, that speed, for lack of a better word, is good. Speed is right, Speed works. Speed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.

I'm glad we got that out of the way... first.

I'm intrigued by the Motiv and Oura Rings.

I'm unlikely to wear a Sport watch 24/7 and don't like the idea of wearing a Whoop! Strap 24/7.

However, I'm leery of both the accuracy of optical HRV and the algorithm that Motiv and Oura potentially use. (I don't think either have a history / knowledge base in endurance athletics).

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I talk a lot - Give it a listen: http://www.fasttalklabs.com/category/fast-talk
I also give Training Advice via http://www.ForeverEndurance.com

The above poster has eschewed traditional employment and is currently undertaking the ill-conceived task of launching his own hardgoods company. Statements are not made on behalf of nor reflective of anything in any manner... unless they're good, then they count.
http://www.AGNCYINNOVATION.com

I used the HRV garmin app as well as the elite HRV android app with a chest strap when I first returned to endurance training after 10 years on the injured reserve list.

I have a 920xt, and I also tried the recovery advisor function of that.

In general my experience with those was/is that they were pretty accurate during the transition back to sport. Hrv would drop through the floor following high TSS days, and the recovery advisor would give me a "fair" rating. Generally they all tracked TSB pretty well... And my actual feeling /performance on a given day.

However, after reaching my first season peak.... I found then to become less reliable and more random. Even when I could tell hat my legs were shot, the hrv metrics would still be quite high, and reocovery advisor would say "good" even though pace/power/hr all said "no way".

Because of that I didn't bother with them this year... So, I can't comment on year 2.

Hi xtrpickels,

Did you try a device yet this year? I got curious about this again as my coworker uses the oura ring (for general health more than athletics).

I find the pricing interesting - Oura is $300 for the ring up front, but no monthly fees. Whoop is $20-30 subscription per month depending on commitment.

I would prefer to stay within a brand/ecosystem I already have if possible so considering the Garmin vivosmart 4. It's also priced well compared to the other options at $130.

Any vivosmart 4 users?

--Edited to correct device. I meant vivosmart 4, not vivoactive 4.

a coach that knows their shit?

The problem with a lot of these toys is the ability to understand and integrate the information into a larger picture. Toys or not, the coach is key to pulling all of that together and making sense of it and setting a path to proceed on.

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36 kona qualifiers 2006-'23 - 3 Kona Podiums - 4 OA IM AG wins - 5 IM AG wins - 18 70.3 AG wins
I ka nana no a 'ike -- by observing, one learns | Kulia i ka nu'u -- strive for excellence
Garmin Glycogen Use App | Garmin Fat Use App

I’ve been using the HRV4 app on my phone for a couple of years and have a Garmin 935 and Edge 530.
I go through phases of thinking that the HRV4 app is way off and unreliable. I get a very low score and recommend to take it easy but decide to go out for an easy ride and feel great and end up setting some new PRs. Or I go out after a low score and my Garmin tells me that my recovery is good or I get a performance condition of 5.
Or HRV4 gives a score of 8.5 and recommends I “go for it”, and then I plan a hard session and end up abandoning it because I don’t feel good.
But I then go through a period of totally agreeing with the HRV4 score.

My wife tells me I should ignore both and go on how I feel. But it would be great to have some more scientific basis on hand when planning what training to do. We have all felt crap but gone out anyway and had a great ride or run, so how you feel is just as unreliable as technology.

Most of what I have read seems to support the theory about HRV and recovery indication, but I’m struggling to find tech that’s capable of converting that data consistently.

Today HRV4 was lowish 7.5, but Garmin 530 gave performance condition as +5. But my heart rate seemed low for the feel of the effort. I went hard up a long climb and only got it up to 153 (my max is 176), but my lungs were telling my I was close to my limit. Power meter was also reporting around my FTP. So was I not recovered and that’s why I couldn’t get my heart rate up?
I’d love to be able to trust the tech, but with conflicting reports it makes it look like it’s just snake oil.

One consideration that may cut across your categories is the supplier of the recovery algorithm. For example, Garmin (AFAIK) uses algorithms from Firstbeat. If you have not seen their website, it's pretty interesting and they provide a number of whitepapers to describe - to some degree - how the recovery outputs are calculated. The Firstbeat page list some partners, including Garmin and Suunto and ... Huawei (among others). So it's possible that the calculations are similar/identical for some devices that cut across vendor and/or 'type'. Of course the input data from a wrist OHR device will be different than a ring or a phone app.

My own experience is with a Garmin 920XT. A pretty old device and, presumably, using older FB algoritms; this device does not have the 'all day stress' that some newer devices provide, but has a recovery time after workouts and a recovery state near the beginning of each workout. I don't find either of these useful. The recovery time seems excessively long almost always - I did a tough, but not over the top Sufferfest for 60 min yesterday and got an estimated recovery time of 36 hours or something (I don't pay that much attention anymore). But, about 20 hours later I feel great and am about to do a trail run. And the recovery state for me is almost always 'good', even in this scenario where I (apparently) accumulate more than 24 hrs of fatigue from a workout and then do a 2nd workout in much less time. Interestingly, the recovery state seems to be an indicator of upcoming illness - often when it reports 'fair' (rarely) or 'poor' (almost never as in 2-3 times in three+ years), I wind up with a virus within a day or so...

I'm double-wristing right now with a Garmin and a Whoop, so could have some nice comparative graphs to offer.

The Whoop is heavily HRV based, but attempts more. It's shtick is to divide your life into thirds. "Recovery," Strain," and "Sleep." It estimates a score for each one using an adaptive statistical baseline. The "Recovery" is R-R based. "Strain" is HR-based. "Sleep" is a little fuzzy to me, but I think they use HR, R-R, and accelerometers.

There are two short questionnaires each day. One about your sleep, and the other about injury, sickness, etc. But it's unclear to me if they're used. They're certainly not required as you can skip them and it's perfectly happy to update the scores anyway.

You can look at each of these scores independently. And there's a "Weekly Assessment" page that runs several graphs so you can spot trends.

Here are a few screenshots. I'm generally surprised that it's given me mediocre sleep scores given I've always considered myself a world-class sleeper. The really bad Tuesday sleep in the graph below I think is because I took a nap on Tuesday, then went to bed later. It really didn't like that.

Overall my jury is still out on the Whoop. It's cute and easy. (They've definitely checked the box for "recruit social media influencers.") So far it does seem to have correlated reasonably well to what's going on with me. In all 3 scores. Whether that provides meaningful value to my training, I'm not entirely sure yet.

Edit: Saw the comment on optical HR. I've been very lucky there. Both my Garmin and Whoop optical HR measurements seem very consistent and accurate. But maybe that's just me. I'm going to sell both of my Garmin chest straps. A nice feature of the Whoop is that it broadcasts HR via the standard BT protocol, so it's picked up naturally by my Wahoo head unit, so I can also use it as a general purpose heartrate monitor.