fooferdoggie 

I ride a e bike so it is good to keep track of my heart rate to see how hard I am working. I used my apple watch either with apples bike app or stravia.

I ride 3 times or more a day 2 35 minute commute rides at 10 miles each and 10 to 20 or more on the tandem when I get home. just after the two rides when I get home my watch would be at 10% plus I would forget to stop recording the ride on stravia and that would kill my heart rate average. I bought a fitbit charge 4 as it does auto recording. well it worked well. but it is really off on steps it gets twice the amount as my apple watch. it also does not make workouts in the heath app it just goes under goes under exercise time. So I just used it to keep track of my heart rate and used my garmin gps to send info to stravia and that syncs with the health app.

that seemed to work well. but I started having the fitbit not get the right heart rate on my morning rides. it works fine on the way home. no matter how tight the band was or what it would read wrong. like may show 70 to 90 when my heart rate is 130. I think it is because the mornings have been around 57 the last several days. so this will make it useless most of the year.

before I figured that out I just got a garmin vivosport but it is super off all the time with my heart rate. either way too low or high while just sitting around. some of the better garmin watches would work a few would send my heart rate to my gps so stravia would capture it all. but I have to war my watches on one wrist because I have a tattoo on the other so I doubt there would be room for a standard garmin watch and my apple watch at the same time.

I am almost thinking the only solution it just recharge my watch in the middle of the day or get a chest strap heart rate monitor. all I get from the apple watch is average heart rate no real details unless I go deep in stravia. I guess the same would be with the garmin chest strap? but that would be a hassle of remembering to put it on twice a day.

sdmc530

for accuracy during a work out the check strap is no doubt the most accurate. My Garmin watch does ok until the HR gets high then its just wonky, but the chest strap is always very close.

Iride01 

A chest strap connected via ant+ or bluetooth to a device of some sort will typically be your most accurate for recreational purposes to get your HR. However with any, some people just have issues. Not sure why. I have few issues or maybe my demands aren't a high. I can live with a few spikes because I know they are errors.

Don't expect your recreational HR device to be a medical grade device. All it tells you is beats per minute. It doesn't give you other important info that your cardiologist will want to know.

fooferdoggie 

the apple watch is accurate but it only checks every 60 seconds. I used its ekg function to capture my extra heart beat. and send it to the doc. but having my heart rate displayed on my garmin while I ride would help me keep the pace as I can slack off on the e bike and not notice. I guess I could wear the strap all day if it is not too uncomfortable. the fitbit worked well but not working when it is cool eliminates it pretty fast. I wonder if the higher end models would work better?

Iride01 

Maybe you need to get an ICD if you have a medical condition that needs constant monitoring for medical reasons. They doctors put a monitor in me. They last about three years and the reports go to the doctor automatically with nothing needed from me other than an app on a smartphone. It was as cheap or cheaper than the external EKG they had me wear for two weeks.

fooferdoggie 

no I don't need anything I had a couple ekg's but I have a extra heart beat its pretty common. it actually feels like your heart skips a beat. I jsut want a lazy way to keep track when I am riding.

Iride01 

Then don't get too bogged down in the moments your device isn't giving good data. I use a Garmin Edge 500 with HR chest strap and speed and cadence sensors to capture all my ride data. I save all my rides to my PC for the sake of just knowing I'll always have them if I want to look at them. I also will upload them to RideWithGPS and view them. But any site you like is fine. The very old Garmin Training Center program still works on my Win10 PC. And many still use Golden Cheetah to view their data offline.

Just about any recreational HR monitor, with or without GPS will give you sufficient info. For myself, I'd want something with a display mounted on my handlebars or stem so I don't have to get my wrist in a decent position to view and possibly be momentarily messing up the things a wrist type monitor needs to read HR.

blacknbluebikes 

check out Polar h10

Tourist in MSN

Is your concern your average or are you more interested when you are exerting yourself climbing hills, etc?

I have no known heart issues but at my age I like to make sure I do not overdo anything when exercising, I use a cheap HRM that only gives me an instantaneous number with a chest strap. When I am climbing a hill, I can glance at it and see if it is time for me to slow down. No averages, or anything like that, but I get what I want out of it.

fooferdoggie 

I want to do this with the least amount of effort. the Fitbit seemed to work well but I cant always get it to read right. I don't know what has changed but the ride home I only got it reading better in the middle of the ride. my Apple Watch does well getting my heart rate not really in real time and it is not really accurate getting my ride info. A friend let me try his chest strap today and it works well but it is a hassle to put it on and off twice a day. but it gets all my info into stravia. I don't know if I can manage two regular size watches but a Garmin watch would be the second easiest solution. here I the same ride with the strap with my Apple Watch and with the Fitbit.

Seattle Forrest

Chest strap is the way to go. No question.

You can get one for $25-30 on Amazon.

Think of it as part of getting ready to ride. I check the air in my tires before every ride too. Doing that reminds me to grab the chest strap. Every now and then I forget and that's ok, but for the most part I've done it so many times it's like being on autopilot.

fooferdoggie 

but do you do that 3 or 4 times a day? I get lazy about that kind of stuff.
but I why to see my hear rate because like today I was going on a short 2.5 mile ride and feeling a bit tired and I usually go 22 up that hill on pretty low assist level but not today. but I kept my hear rate up to 140 even going to more assist to keep the 22mph . my like has a torque sensor so on days I feel better I can push harder then the bike helps more and I don't get my hr up as high as days I don't feel as good. so now I can see how hard I am working. today my morning ride I did all the flats in eco mode at 20 to 22 first time I could do that. eco mode is about 25% assist it just takes out the heavy bike and bigger tires out of the ride effort.

fooferdoggie 

after playing a bit and finishing a job I had to work 12 hours a day I decided to get a garmin watch. this thing I great. I can connect my cadence sensor too it and broadcast my heart rate to my garmin gps. since it does heart rate in real time it works far better for it then my Apple Watch. Plus my commuter bike gps does not have grade s oI can use the watch to show me that and it is faster at sensing then my other Garmin gps. it is a lot more accurate on steps then the Fitbit is too and it keeps track of your sleep. here is a record of a short ride with the wife and I on the tandem a easy ride as she as been sick. but the top one is the garmin gps with the garmin chest strap and the one below is the garmin watch issuing the cadence sensor on the bike.

fietsbob

Finger on the artery in your wrist and the sweep second hand on your watch is a classic.


I can tell when I'm on a steep hill and my heart rate is uncomfortably high
without any devices or even using the above Medical practitioner's method,
I not being in a race , but a long bike tour, get off and push, rest, let the rate drop & push onward again..





....

fooferdoggie 

don't even like taking one hand off the bars.

njkayaker

Walking is pretty "classic" too. Why do you ride a bike?

Iride01 

My manual method of placing a finger on my radial artery doesn't have ant+ capability. So I won't be able to review it later and match to my other data since I can't take notes fast enough while moving 30 to 50 fps.

fietsbob

to get to those hills, then up to the top and coast down the other side.. or stop at the top and make camp, to enjoy the view..

enjoy your toys.. just pony up what that chest belt sensor heart rate monitor costs ..





..

sfrider 

To determine how much the bike assists, just turn it off and ride up the same hill at the same perceived effort. The speed drop will be nearly linear, so if the bike assists 25% for 22mph, the speed without assist will be 22/1.25, or 17.5 mph. I suspect the situation will be more you assisting the bike than the other way around.

fooferdoggie 

It depends on how I feel. Like some days I am in the next to lowest assist level and I have a hard time keeping 22 mph. Other days it feels like I am in turbo its so easy to keep that 22mph in the same assist level. So I use a combo of heart rate and cadence and speed to determine how much assist I use. I want to keep my heart rate around 130 or above cadence 80 to 90 and speed 20 to 22. Some days I need the next to lowest assist level some days I can do it on eco level that is just enough to mitigate the extra bike weight and bigger tires. I have worked my way from needing to be in turbo mode always to eco mode more and more since November. With a mid drive with a torque sensor the harder you can push the more the motor helps in each mode. So the better I feel the harder it is together my heart rate up in the same assist level.
my body's wacky as it will only let me eat protein and I have had really low energy levels till I got the e bike. And it took 3 or so much before I could actually start to work at pedaling even then it took awhile till I could put consistent effort into it. Try have a smartphone hub thats supposed to be out soon that would show me How much power the bike is putting out and how much I am. My tandem has a simple meter but not my main bike.
In never I could do 100 miles or so a week on max assist to now around 220 to 240 on nes=xt to or the lowest assist level. I average 35 miles a day now.

bikebikebike

Don't even pretend the HRM gives you anything a physician will accept as data.
It will possibly open you to a $3K to 10K work up, with poor predictive value.
The best of them are mediocre compared to the one the doc paid $2500 for.
If this isn't a medical concern, calibrate the HRM and realize that 20% of the time its data is in error, and go play.

amaramartin

Hey !!
I guess you must use a Fitbit Alta HR

JohnJ80

you can connect an external HRM to your Apple Watch which will significantly reduce the battery consumption. Wahoo makes a nice HRM that you put around your upper arm. I’ve had them for years and they work great.

gsa103

I have two HRM's and have actually used both to cross-compare. I've got a Polar OH1, which is basically just a better version of optical sensors, and a Garmin chest strap. The chest strap is consistently more responsive, but both work reasonably well. The Polar seems to use a 30s filter, while the Garmin is more like 10s.
I used the OH1 primarily for fencing, I could keep it on my back arm, instead my chest where it would get hit. It's easier to slip on and off than the chest strap and you position it directly over a major vein so it gets a better signal than a standard smart watch.

fooferdoggie 

that's a good idea. I have the wahoo as my bikes new computer would not connect to my garmin. Now I need to recover from m,y crash to see how well I can do.