Garmin HRV – What should my Garmin HRV be?
In a recent study by Balewgizie S Tegegne et al, 84,772 participants were used to create what is probably the best indication to date of HRV for each age group.
Click to enlarge (HRV table by age, large image)
You can use the link above to find more details on the study but the authors used RMSSD as the mathematical calculation for HRV. This is the calculation that most wearables use although I believe that Apple uses SDNN.
You can get your own HRV value from Garmin at this address: https://connect.garmin.com/modern/health-snapshots if you have taken health snapshots and in other places on your Connect app. Simply compare a typical value for you against the value from the study and the higher your value the better. Note that the study used 10-second ECG readings to determine HRV and that the method used to take your reading will be different and thus strictly not comparable.
Parody: Garmin Fenix, Forerunner and Edge Messages – What they really mean
Here is one of my health snapshots with the HRV value circled.
You could note that your HRV will generally decline with age and increase with fitness, if you are a young male it might be a bit higher (better) than a similarly profiled man.
If you look at your HRV at a specific point in time, it could be lower because you are stressed or ill, and if you have just exercised, it could be much higher (or lower!) than is the case for you normally. A morning reading or nighttime average is the best period from which to calculate HRV over extended timescales.
Note: Different software could use a proprietary calculation. Make sure you are comparing apples with apples.
Some of the tests I do when writing reviews for this site involve 2-minute waking HRV readings taken with a Polar H10 strap and comparing that ‘standard’ to other waking readings or nightly average readings from other technologies like the WHOOP strap or my Eight Sleep Smart Mattress. It’s often tricky to see these technologies agree as many factors are conspiring against my tests, that’s why Tegegne’s study offers compelling insights.
Caution: About 60% of HRV is genetic.
Further caution: Our populations are unhealthy and this data will be negatively impacted as a result.
Eight Sleep – Scientific Validation of HRV & Smart Sleep Benefits -HRV boosted by 7%
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Link doesn’t work, page cannot be found
this link is correct to the science: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2047487319872567
this link is correct if you have health snapshots and a garmin connect account: https://connect.garmin.com/modern/health-snapshots
hrv info can be available in other places too on the app.
Is your Watch compatible? I use an older Fenix 5x Pro, which happens to NOT be compatible. In fact as far as the Fenix line goes, this is pretty much exclusive to the Fenix 7. So there’s one possible reason.
I like this HRV thing. Not least because in my case it tells me I’m like a much younger person:)
I have been using the Forerunner 965 for almost 8 months now and my baseline is 63-74. I am 54yrs old btw.
I’m going by the premise that the average overnight metric provided by the watch is pretty accurate and would closely agree with the (averaged out) 10sec ECG-based measurements referenced here. Also for like a month I was also taking 2 min measurments every morning with a chest strap and some app (I think it was Elite HRV) and that also over the month gave me the same average (high 60’s). Talking about RMSSD of course. My Fitbit HRV average that I was wearing in parallel for a month was also very close (2 ms off).
So overall I think it is accurate, at least for me. My 965 seems to like my wrist and even while running it rarely disagrees with a Polar strap much (also parallel-tested for a month). Also, the day after an easy run it has a statistically insignificant effect on it, but the day after a tough threshold run it is very predictably lower than my average by about 10ms. So I’m a bit of a nerd with it, first thing I check in the morning!
The “Health snapshot” thing I find useless as it can give very different results in the space of 5 mins. Also (and I think this is a bug), taking one is considered an “activity” by Garmin and affects your recovery time!
yes, that sounds right
I didn’t realize HRV numbers were absolute, I thought they were relative like HR BPM with some people just genetically having higher max HR for example.
I bit the bullet and wore my 965 at night enough to establish a baseline and while I haven’t seen an overnight score of anything higher than 46, Garmin set the baseline at 40-51 for me. That seems “low” overall, and now I’m wondering if I am doing something wrong with my recovery.
No, I think youre doing just fine. As you said, that’s above average for the age group. If you suspect that you are overtraining/not recovering enough, you can easily take 3-4 days off cardio (you can still do strength stuff) and see if your values creep up significantly by the 3rd/4th day. If you usually see 41-42 and after rest you see close to 50, then maybe you need to be allowing a bit more recovery. Of course let’s not forget that everything else has to be equal, i.e. you’re coming down with any cold and you’re not stressed before sleeping etc:) I have found out that stressful thinking before sleep has brought my HRV down when exercise-load wise I was expecting it to go up or stay put.
“You’re NOT coming down with a cold”.
It’s worth mentioning here something that happened to me a month ago. I went for a hard run and the next morning I was expecting mh HRV to go from 69 the night before to around 60 (as it uually does afer a hard effort). But it was 82 instead. I thought that was very weird because HRV has been seemingly quite accurate for me and consistently representative of my fatigue/stress level. The next day same thing, 81, which was still quite high. I thought there was something wrong with the HR sensor, so I checked the lights and only one was on, or the second one was much dimmer. I also checked the HRV plot overnight and it had gaps. So basically the sensor was mulfuncionning and the HRV measurement was off as a result. I rebooted the thing and bingo, both lights have been on ever since, and HRV measurement went back to normal after that. Something to keep in mind or people out there. In general it’s good to restart he watch every once in a while.
good point
hrv CAN go super high when things are not good too. wierd stuff does happen (check marco altinis MEDIUM blog)
their meaning is relative
P.S. I’m a 50-54 male and if I am reading that table correctly, the mean for my age/sex is 28 – a value of 40ish is pretty good?
that sounds right
Thanks for the feedback and the helpful info. I’ve never paid much attention to HRV, just monitored measured “stress” levels along with Load etc so this is a brand new area for me to obsess over. 🙂
it’s really quite interesting IMHO
there is a lot more to dive into beyond the straightforward stuff
eg search for dfa a1 on this site 😉 plus look at how garmin determines lthr (and hence hr zones)
Yep, I dabbled in dfa a1 (if you mean using that to determine Aerobic threshold etc) some time ago. Need to get back to that.
P.S. Shot in the dark here: Does anyone use SportTracks? They will display an HRV value in the Health page that they apparently get from Garmin but I have no idea what the numbers mean. For example, while Garmin tells me my HRV has been in the 40s with an occasional overnight dip avg of lower than that, SportTracks Health page shows all my values during the same period of 90s+ with an occasional dip into the 70s. I have no idea where these numbers are coming from.
Note that these values will not be good to compare with what Garmin gives as your hrv during the night since hrv is way lower when awake and not optimally rested as during the night.
indeed, also they would have been taken with an accurate ecg…which garmin isn’t
I don’t think one is “optimally rested during the night”. We need the whole night to recover, so it is logical to assume it starts low as you are tired when you go to bed and ends up high as you wake up and have recovered. Unless of course you are a classic 9-5 person and after work you just lie on the couch and thus start recovering before actually going to bed. I’ve seen supposedly representative 24h plots of HRV and they seem to imply as much. But what if you go out after work, or you are an evening runner, go to the gym, etc? Then I cannot see how HRV would start increasing after 6pm as those plots suggest. Eitherway, in my case for most nights I see no clear trend of HRV during sleep, mainly noise. But as I mentionned above, the average/mean strongly correlates with my level of exertion and/or stress.
Also when I got the watch I measured HRV with a Polar H10 and EliteHRV every morning in bed as I woke up (at around 8h30am) and while the day to day variation seemed random, in the end the monthly average was very close to the monthly average of the overnight measurements of my Garmin (61 and 63 respectively at the time). According to said plots it should’ve been much lower in the morning, but it wasn’t. After 8 months of more regular training as I got the watch, the average overnight HRV has gone up, as one would expect I guess, now standing at around 68.
I started using my 965 the day I came down with COVID in October. I had COVID / some post COVID sinus issues then shingles, then a gash to my head. I was finishing up Shingles by Nov 24. Now Dec 13 my HRV is still lower than it was when dealing with COVID sinus issues. Around 33ms I’m 42.
Not much to add other than I am shocked my HRV is still way at the bottom many weeks after shingles. It is basically saying rest every day (no training!), but I feel relatively good.
garmin uses a baseline calculation.
that baseline adjusts over time (weeks not months)
there could be more complex explanations
You didn’t say, were you training before the virus, have you been training lately, are you stressed either consciously or subconsciously before sleeping and why are you saying it is at the bottom, compared to what, what is your current baseline? Like 40-50? If it says rest every day it’s probably because you are consistently way lower than your current baseline. But since you started using the watch when you caught the virus, you simply cannot know what your normal HRV levels are (they are likely even higher than your current baseline!).
And remember, all this assuming the measurement is accurate for you. Since HRV is based on HR and HR wrist measurement is not that accurate for many wrists, you may simply be looking and stressing over bogus numbers. So don’t stress, it may only make it worse! If I were you I would go on fast walks or easy (not long) runs almost every day, as those are supposed to help HRV (I read somewhere).
Wonder why my heart rate variability appears a lot younger than my actual age but fitness age equals my actual age?
is Garmin’s fitness age based on science? or just a made up number?
your HRV is based on an actual reading. you might assume the reading is taken correctly and the calcualtion performed correctly. your hrv compared to the study is compared to decent science.
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My overnight HRV baseline is 104-138ms, I’ve been using my garmin forerunner 255, then 965 for just under a year now. I’m at 28yo male.