I recently got a Garmin 935. I was hopeful that the recovery analysis features that they licensed from “FirstBeat” would be helpful. The watch really hasn’t had time to get a good baseline on me so it’s too early for me to reach any conclusion re. the FirstBeat features providing info rigorous enough to be of any use.
Any positive or negative experiences out there re. using First Beat recovery analysis features on a Garmin or any other device? Anyone been on a team where the staff used First Beat features to help guide training?
For decades I didn’t need hardly any recovery time. But now that I’m mid 50s I have to carefully balance training and recovery or I get deeper in debt. I’m finding that I’m constantly over-optimistic in assessing my state of recovery. Hence me chasing down ideas that might help do that assessing.
I love it. I put into the same categories as their recovery alert that beeps 5 minutes into a workout, the VO2 Max, Lactate threshold, training status, etc. They are not precision. But I have found that they are very good at confirming how I feel. For example, I had a rough recovery following dehydration at Augusta last week. I did not do anything all week, and I got out Saturday for a long slow run to loosen up again. Normally, my 5 minute recovery alert is positive, especially after a week of virtually no activity, but Saturday it was negative. I was only 5 minutes into the run, and the watch was telling me what I also knew-- it was going to be a long outing. So, they are probably not useful to live your life around, but they are fun.
I love it. I put into the same categories as their recovery alert that beeps 5 minutes into a workout, the VO2 Max, Lactate threshold, training status, etc. They are not precision. But I have found that they are very good at confirming how I feel. For example, I had a rough recovery following dehydration at Augusta last week. I did not do anything all week, and I got out Saturday for a long slow run to loosen up again. Normally, my 5 minute recovery alert is positive, especially after a week of virtually no activity, but Saturday it was negative. I was only 5 minutes into the run, and the watch was telling me what I also knew-- it was going to be a long outing. So, they are probably not useful to live your life around, but they are fun.
I would agree with this assessment. I certainly would not schedule around it, but it seems to be decent in forecasting how I feel. I did IMChoo and did very little through the week. Took some walks, light spins on the bike. Went out for a run on Sunday morning for 10 miles of hills. 5 Minutes in, Recovery Adviser told me I was at -3. I thought it was funny, since I’d had a full week but sure enough, the run hurt a lot worse then I expected. I could tell me legs weren’t fully back.
Most of the time, the proposed recovery time is a joke to me. I’m not going to give my body 40 hours to recover from a long run when I am in training. It just doesn’t happen. But, it does help me keep tabs on what i’m putting my body through and help prioritize workouts to allow more time for recovery (versus running back to back days, etc). Most of it is intuitive, without the adviser, however.
I think their meaningless for me. A good example is this morning. I took my dog for a 1 mile walk and it told me I needed 15 hours to recover. Granted, she’s a young spunky Dachshund but it wasn’t that stressful of a walk.
In addition, if you use more than 1 device to record your training it is never going to show anything more than “good” for recovery status, since it has no idea you are cheating on the device with another device.
Recovery Status looks at HR and other metrics from your current activity. For me, it does not care about other activities from other devices. Garmin is not explicit on how it works. In my experience, when I am sick, over-trained, recovering from a race, etc., Recovery Status knows.
Now, the Recovery Advisor recovery time that pops up after a workout is not as informational. It does tell me when I had a very tough workout (probably a variation on Suffer Score), but I never consider that I will give myself all the time it thinks for recover.
The recovery check that comes ~12 minutes into your workout will still be relevant though, and that’s the one I care about. I find the post workout recovery time to be far too long, assuming I’m healthy and getting decent sleep and nutrition then I normally reckon my actual recovery time is about half what it estimates. The 12 minute check is helpful though.
I rode for 2 hours hard yesterday. My FTP is 277. My NP yesterday was right around 240. It told me my recovery was 7 hours.
It’s a POS.
My experience as well.
I can do a very hard ride, frequently into the red zone for 2-3 hours, where my legs will throb all night and it will tell me 12 hours recovery. In contrast, I can do a 5 hour ride, mostly above threshold, but not much red zone, where my legs feel a little tired, but not too bad at all and it will tell me 36 hours recovery.
I’ve tried “most” of the recovery analysis methods over the last year: HRV (several different methods), RHR, garmin recovery advisor, and recovery check. In addition, I’ve used training peaks TSS (both by sport, and combined).
Know what works? Walking up a flight of stairs. That tells me how I’m doing more accurately than all of the others combined.
I think the heart metrics MIGHT work better for single sport athletes. Earlier in the year I was much more “bike” centric, because my run and swim volume were dwarfed by comparison. Back then, I could reliably use HRV/RHR to predict the “flight of stairs” test results. Also, recovery advisor, and recovery check followed suit. However, as my swim/run volume became more balanced with my cycling I found that HRV/RHR became more unpredictable. But, the other factor to consider is that I was much more fit in all respects.
But, through all of that…simply walking up a flight of stairs and assessing how I feel at the top continues to work like clockwork.
I’m as data driven as they come…I spent a long time collecting all the heart metrics and logging them in training peaks. I had the HRV app on my 920xt, and set it up to record my HRV/RHR every night at 3am. I really wanted it to work for what sound like the same reasons you do. But, I just couldn’t make it make sense.
I’ve tried “most” of the recovery analysis methods over the last year: HRV (several different methods), RHR, garmin recovery advisor, and recovery check. In addition, I’ve used training peaks TSS (both by sport, and combined).
Know what works? Walking up a flight of stairs. That tells me how I’m doing more accurately than all of the others combined.
I think the heart metrics MIGHT work better for single sport athletes. Earlier in the year I was much more “bike” centric, because my run and swim volume were dwarfed by comparison. Back then, I could reliably use HRV/RHR to predict the “flight of stairs” test results. Also, recovery advisor, and recovery check followed suit. However, as my swim/run volume became more balanced with my cycling I found that HRV/RHR became more unpredictable. But, the other factor to consider is that I was much more fit in all respects.
But, through all of that…simply walking up a flight of stairs and assessing how I feel at the top continues to work like clockwork.
I’m as data driven as they come…I spent a long time collecting all the heart metrics and logging them in training peaks. I had the HRV app on my 920xt, and set it up to record my HRV/RHR every night at 3am. I really wanted it to work for what sound like the same reasons you do. But, I just couldn’t make it make sense.
That’s long been my system too. But my tenacious optimism keeps creating trouble. I keep convincing myself that I’m recovered enough to train. Then I go have a lousy workout, and end up digging my recovery hole even deeper. I need to be able to stop myself and say “I know it’s been 3 days, but the legs are still flat. Take the cycling shorts off and go walk the dog”.
No number is going to teach you patience. You can always talk yourself into doing $hit. You need to give yourself permission to abort, and adjust in real-time.
You don’t have to take the shorts off…just drop the intensity…replace with a zone2 ride of appropriate duration. After my Oly last Sunday, I was totally fried. I could barely walk.
I did zone1/2 rides all week until Thursday waiting to pass the stair test. Did a 2x20 on Thursday (because I passed the stair test) and hit my second highest 20 minute power all-time. Sometimes you just never know when the legs are gonna “go”. At that point I was still so sore I couldn’t run!
I’ve also passed the stair test before and gone out to do an interval workout. But, I wasn’t able to get anywhere near the expected power zone. Maybe I go out for a 2x20 @215watts, and 5 minutes into the first 20 I’m suffering to hold 200 thinking “there’s no way I’m going to make it to 20 minutes.” If power AND RPE are disconnected 5 minutes into a 2x20 like this, I’ll abort and just do a zone2 ride for the remainder. If power is OK, but RPE is disconnected…then I’ll hang on for the at least half of the first interval and see if I can stop being a wuss. If its still a sufferfest at the 50% point, I bag the intensity and replace with zone2.
I don’t bag the entire workout, I just cut the intensity and laugh at the interval timer as it continues to beep at me.
I reliably walk a couple miles each day. One of the things I was hoping to figure out with gizmos giving me relatively rigorous #'s re. feedback, is whether or not the walks help me recover. I think they do, but I’ve been wrong before.
I have a hard time tho doing a workout easy enough that it aids recovery. To my very great surprise, no matter how sissified I make some little piddly ride, it seems to make recovery slower, not faster. That is to say, if the ride (or run) is more intense then walking a mile or two with the dogs, the effort hinders recovery. I’d hoped that rigorous recovery #'s might help me find some threshold of recovery run/ride that really was recovery. W/o some strong feedback that the pitiful wretch I’ve become can do “recovery” workouts, it’s back to walking the dogs.
Fortunately, the consensus that’s emerging in this thread is that the latest gizmos do provide the rigorous feedback re. recovery that I was hoping for, so the 935 was money well spent.
I agree with the lack of apparent correlation between ‘recovery time’ and how I feel / perform the next day. Here’s the real question. You workout and ‘recovery time’ says, maybe, ‘36 hrs’. Then you go out 24 hrs later, start a workout and ‘recovery advisor’ reports ‘good’ a few minutes into that workout. Why are these never correlated? Why is this data not ‘self-correcting’? Garmin must get 1000’s (maybe 10,000’s or 100,000’s) of these data pairs every day. I have trashed myself in races and in training many times. My ‘recovery time’ is sometimes 48 hrs. But the total number of times I’ve seen anything but a ‘good’ recovery advisor; is…twice in 20 months. And those were ‘fair’. Friends tell me that ‘poor’ is also a possible result. But the bottom line - the lack of correlation between ‘recovery time’ and ‘recovery advisor’ is evidence that the entire scheme is a fraud.
it seems pretty spot on for me sometimes… then others its so far off I cant help but laugh I have had it tell me things like 12 days recovery time after a half marathon etc