Garmin HRV or Elite HRV - Which is more accurate?

I got a H10 for just this :wink:
But Iā€™m thinking about switching to an Oura Ring as I usually donā€™t train late in the evening or eat late, so the difference between nightly and morning measurements should be negligible. My garmin however is not that accurate due to wearing a titanium bracelet instead if the silicone strap, which means that especially when laying down it can be the case that the optical sensor wonā€™t rest against my skin perfectly.

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You should also have a look at HRV4Training!

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Iā€™ve actually subscribed to both EliteHRV and HRV4T to compare. Early days but preferring Elite HRV at the moment.

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I find HRV4Training much easier to use than Elite. Integration with TP and Intervals is so simple.

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Iā€™m currently waiting for my Oura Ring and am planning to use it for morning readings like Marco Altini explains in a blog (donā€™t have the link right now)

The API (Oura API (2.0) Documentation) gives me HRV (as rMSSD) for sessions - so just do a 3+ min session in the morning, and HRV is supposed to show up for that session. But there is no SDDN anywhere, however for sleep periods they give you HRV data as a list of values - Iā€™m not sure what exactly those values are. If they are raw data, could I in theory calculate SDDN myself? that way Iā€™d have SDDN from the sleep periods and rMSSD from my morning reading?

I can also recommend the Kubios HRV app (and also the free desktop version, which is way more detailed). I dumped HRV4 because if I rarely) happened to miss a day, it complained. Then it lost contact wth my chest strap; I tried using the camera/ flash, but that got to be a pain. Elite just seems to be occasionally random. I wrote to them about some numbers that were coming out strange (><20% off compared to both HRV4 and Kubios, for a while and got a weak reply about ā€˜changed in lifestyleā€™, that really didnā€™t apply). Kubios is free, and works well with the Decathlon store Heart Rate Monitor strap (about ā‚¬30). It also doesnā€™t ask personal questions, like if I drank, exercised or not (nobody could give me a clear answer on whether entering anything there changed anything on the output ā€˜scoreā€™ for the other apps). Iā€™ve been using both Kubios and the same HRM since 2017, elite and HRV irregularly during the similar time.Image shows HRV from 2017-to date; noticeable is the last three months drop for me - ties in with currentlife AC HRV from 2017|690x85

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It doesnā€™t and it shouldnā€™t because anything that influences HRV already has effect on the measurement. If you would also make it count with subjective scores, the effect would be doubled!
There may be apps taking it into account for the Readiness score, but they are wrong.

Dump Readiness scores because every app calculates this in a different way. These values are useless.
What that info (caffeine, alcohol, etcā€¦) can do for you, is make correlations visible. If you inspect long term HRV history and distinctive subjective scores, you can detect eventual relations.

The subjective scores are there to assist with looking at the trend data. Many of us would forget when we had a bad nightā€™s sleep, or a little too much alcohol. Having the scores plotted, makes it easier to do the cross checks.

The same is done with testing and interval workouts, eg. 4x8m at FTP. Subjective scores like feel, RPE are used to correlate to the Power and HR. Being able to compare, is useful to be able to make changes for the next time.

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Dump readiness scores? What do you mean by that? Sure arenā€™t the MatLab and Excel sheets effectively giving a readiness score except itā€™s not a 1-10, itā€™s a text based guidance (rest, hit, lit etc). Theyā€™re readiness scores?

Readiness scores are an interpretation of the measured values RHR and rMSSD and ā€¦???
Some apps seem to take other stuff into account, others donā€™t. And neither of them is telling you what they use or not. Thatā€™s why these interpretations never alignā€¦
The MatLab and Excel tell you exactly what is used, RHR and LN(rMSSD) and to what the measured values are compared (30d avgā€¦).
Thereā€™s no ā€˜interpretationā€™, itā€™s a mathematical outcome.

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I understand now.
Iā€™m not sure what apps do use the subjective data to calculate the readiness score.
I know HRV4T doesnā€™t (other than to tell you how those scores trend) and EliteHRV definitely doesnā€™t use them.
Iā€™m pretty sure EliteHRV doesnā€™t use HR in itā€™s calculations. Canā€™t be sure but I prefer your Excel sheet / the Matlab over the EliteHRV recommendations

Iā€™ve been using Elite HRV for some years; I was annoyed by a bug with the breathwork feature, causing a lost connection with my chest strap (Garmin HRM Pro) after a few minutes, but the morning readiness used to work fine. In the last several months though, the same problem occurs with the morning readiness. Sometimes it interrupts after one minute, sometimes after 4:29 minutes.

I just tried Kubios after reading about it on this forum, and it has the exact same problem.
The difference is that Elite HRV still saves reading data, giving something to work with, whilst Kubios doesnā€™t unless Iā€™m lucky enough to get a full reading without this disconnect trouble - which I donā€™t want to test every single morning.

Could it be caused by my phone?

Marco Altini states that his optical measurements are as reliable as using Polar H9/10ā€¦
At other hand Alan Couzens says only Polar gives a reliable measurementā€¦
Who should we follow?

ā€¦ at the end of the day, whatā€™s most important is the trend and the same input.

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Optical measurement is, despite performing it on top smartphones), seems to be a random number generator :wink:
Even taking measurement after measurement, I had a scatter between the results (e.g. 7.1 and then 8.4).
Also very important is the location of the light emitting diode on the camera island in relation to the main unit (because in the HRV4T you canā€™t choose which unit to use for measurement - so itā€™s always the primary one).
Incidentally, measurements taken at the same time and under the same conditions - one as an optical, and the other with the H10 belt and a second smartphone - also gave completely different results.
Another issue in the optical measurement - is the placement of the fingertip on the camera, skin moisture, etc.

A colleague wrote here that the trend is important. And he is as right as possible. However, taking simultaneous measurements using optical technology and involving ā€œH10ā€ for several dozen days in a row, the trend was not maintained :frowning:

Optics, at least in my case, does not pass the test.
In my humble opinion, the sensor on the lapel is the ā€œgolden meanā€ for such a sensitive parameter as HRV.

greetings
Artur