Spark 3 Cardio gym issues

boogeyman

Hi,
I'm using Spark 3 Cardio for one week. Everything seems to be fine, but the main issue I have with a gym. I know that wrist HR monitors are not the best option for weight lifting, but maybe you have some tips? I'm working on Milon machines, it's some kind of cross fitness on 8 machines. Before I get on the bike, I excersice on "simulation" of chest press, and rower. Rower is the main issue, when I get on the bike, my HR drops from around 130 to 80-90 and stays around those values for around 2mins (and I'm riding 4mins...). So it's kinda useless on bike, and that's the excercise where I need it at most. So that's the issues that is well known on any wrist HR devices. Only thing comes to my mind is to do rower (and maybe chest press) at the very end, as I don't really care of HR on those machines. However, I noticed that the HR backs to higher values (not correct though) when I hold hands straight on the bike. So maybe there are some other tips, maybe some method to "loosen" blood vessles or something? Any help is much appreciated
Cheers
Mark

tfarabaugh

There is no way to loosen blood vessels, other than to stop doing exercises that constrict them in the first place. My suggestion would be to use a chest strap, which will eliminate the issues with forearm tension and give you a consistent reading throughout the entire activity.

I hope this helped answer your question. If so, please mark it as a solution so others can look for it if they have the same question.

boogeyman

Yeah, I know the chest strap is the best solution, but for now I don't have money to buy one. Maybe in the future, for now I must change order of excercises to be able to use watch on bike.
Yesterday I pay attention to the HR, and only rower is causing issues in my case.

tfarabaugh

boogeyman wrote:

Yeah, I know the chest strap is the best solution, but for now I don't have money to buy one. Maybe in the future, for now I must change order of excercises to be able to use watch on bike.
Yesterday I pay attention to the HR, and only rower is causing issues in my case.

You can get any BT+ chest strap to use with the watch and they area very inexpensive, you do not need an advanced one. I am surprised that it is only the rower that is causing issues as I would expect the chest press and any other weight lifting machine to also cause drops in HR. Knowing that the one machine is throwing off the readings slightly just take this into account when looking at the overall totals.

I hope this helped answer your question. If so, please mark it as a solution so others can look for it if they have the same question.

boogeyman

Yeah, only rower. So that's a good thing, I can mix things a bit and get proper reading when needed. I know that I can buy something really cheap, but I hate buying low quality stuff I think I will go with Polar H7 as it can also be used on the machines on which I excercise (they use 5khz transmission). But for now, I will make rower at the end of excercises

tfarabaugh

boogeyman wrote:

Yeah, only rower. So that's a good thing, I can mix things a bit and get proper reading when needed. I know that I can buy something really cheap, but I hate buying low quality stuff I think I will go with Polar H7 as it can also be used on the machines on which I excercise (they use 5khz transmission). But for now, I will make rower at the end of excercises

The H7 will not work with the watch to my knowledge, so be careful. This is a case where you may actually be better off buying something cheap. Price seems to not be a factor as the cheaper ones often seem to work better than the expensive ones. This is due to the fact that cheap models are more likely to use the base BT protocols and not customize them for advanced features or settings like more expensive models do (and there is no way of knowing if a manufacturer has tweaked the protocols to take them out of compliance). The BT standard is in such a way a 'standard' that it can be widely interpreted with different settings for buffer sizes, time outs, profiles, protocols, antenna configurations, etc.. TomTom cannot change their code every time a manufacturers messes with the BT coding. This is a case where paying more will not increase the chances of connectivity, it may actually decrease it.

I hope this helped answer your question. If so, please mark it as a solution so others can look for it if they have the same question.

boogeyman

I read on the forum that H7 has some issues, but they was solved. Maybe you are right and I don't need something that expensive. But the issue is also this, that in my country I don't really have choice. Cheap one is around 3 times cheaper then Polar H7, and then the next one in line is Polar H7 and more expensive ones. Recomended here Wahoo Tikcr is around 150% price of H7 which is stupid (probably not so popular here).