For some, it could be as simple as not being placed correctly on the wrist, since being too loose generate a faulty reading, and being too tight can impede blood flow. Which makes sense, because it’s essentially reaching into your chest cavity and recording each beat with a clipboard.Īs we’ll see later, many wrist monitors are not as accurate. A good chest strap will be close to 100% accurate. The chest strap has the advantage of being a semi-direct measurement of heart rate. (Photo: Getty Images) Problems Wrist Monitors Face This process requires some moisture, which is why you may notice readings that are off when you start a run and haven’t worked up a sweat. #Wrist heart monitor skin#Light refracted off the blood flowing beneath the surface of your skin is fed into algorithms that use it to spit out a heart-rate number.Ĭhest straps, meanwhile, use sensors on the strap to record signals from the heart beat. That’s why your watch may have a bright LED light that shines against your skin. Photoplethysmography involves using light to measure blood flow. Most wrist-based heart-rate monitors rely on photoplethysmography, a word that I assume is real. Simply put, for some athletes, wrist-based heart rate is not accurate during intense activity like running, though it varies a ton. “Are you using a wrist-based optical heart-rate monitor?” So, now, I have a standard one-question response. There seemed to be a problem of faulty measurement, rather than faulty hearts. Lots of studies came out that saw discrepancies too. When I first saw these issues a few years ago, worried about arrhythmia or other health crisis, I would ask them to go to the doctor immediately.īut, then, I would look at the data and notice discrepancies. Maybe they sustain 190 heart rate at a moderate effort. And sometimes these athletes’ hearts seem very screwed up, a telltale sign of a major issue. “My body is being weird! I couldn’t get my heart rate up on this run!”Īs Edgar Allan Poe could tell you, little is more disconcerting than a screwed-up heart beat. “My body is being weird! My heart rate was way too high on this run!” Every week or two, I’ll open an athlete’s training log and it seems like a blood-curdling scream leaps off the page.
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