Resting heart rate - upon wake or during sleep

Training
1

The popup help for resting heart rate says that it’s taken immediately upon waking.

But Garmin measures it during sleep, which l expect to always be lower.

Was the definition made before smart watches?

Which value is “better”?

2

The measurement that is always taken under similar conditions (and consistently), so that you are comparing apple vs apples.

3 Likes
3

Thanks!

That would be while asleep for me then. Stress thoughts can change HR once awake.

4

Nope, you just don’t know what sleep phase you’re in when the measurement is taken at a specific time during the night and, if the lowest of the night is used, you don’t know if it was an artefact or not. Wearables have plenty of artefacts caused by movement/position. HR during REM and Deep sleep can be very different.
First thing in the morning after a bathroom visit, if needed, is the most consistent unless you wake up in the middle of a hectic situation.

5

I have a Polar HR Strap from about 1994(?) that synced with my computer using sound. The strap puts out a staccato sound. Placing it near the microphone of the computer, the computer then reads the data stream from the strap by reading the sound bits.

The manual had the user lay down for 5 minutes before a workout to then read the resting HR. The concept has never changed. The strap then used that data, the difference between resting HR and Max HR, to determine the amount of HR the athletes had to work with that day during exercise and set the Zones from that for that days exercise. Dr. David Seiler uses resting HR in the same way with his charts but I don’t remember reading when he measures it,.

Nowadays of course the Resting HR is also used to reflect the bodies long term strain to the daily stresses of exercise.

Anyway. So yes, what @Gerald said. And yes, the idea was around before Garmin watches. First HR monitors came out in the 1980s or so Google says (who can remember back that far?) which started to make training solely by RPE, rate of perceived exertion, a thing of the past. Although frankly RPE still works great. Very few athletes today will ever surpass the fitness of the athletes of yesteryear who used RPE to train.