My new Venu 3 seems to have a weird body battery algorithm. I had covid last week and my BB has been pretty low and not recovering. Also have been dealing with some elderly parent issues and not sleeping well. Today it was at 5 after my day at work. I did a 88 TSS ride and I expected it to drop to zero, it didnt drop at all. Before I was sick, it would often charge to 100 after 7 hours of sleep but then drop 5-7 points in the first 30 min of being awake. I know its just a gimicky estimate but doesnt seem consistent.
It never goes below 5. After my ultra it sat at 5 for days. When my watch was new it would sit much lower than I would have expected it to for the volume of activity I do. It’s now pretty good at not completely crashing for a 6-10 hour ride day. (You do have to record on the watch otherwise it just thinks you’re highly stressed)
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Yeah, the body battery never goes below 5. When you first get the watch, it needs some time to adjust to your training load and lifestyle. It just estimates things based on HR and HRV during the day.
But like @KevinKlaes said, either wear the watch and use it to record the activity, or don’t wear it at all and record on another device, like an Edge head unit and sync the activity with Garmin Connect. If not, the watch will take your wrist heart rate and just think that you’re in a very stressful situation and the readings will be off.
I have had it since november, it just recently started acting weird.
As you said, it is gimmicky junk software. I would rather it be removed. I don’t even look at it. Give me sleep, resting HR and HRV. The rest is feelings and I don’t need a watch to tell me that I am fatigued from a busy or active day.
The sleep tracking isn’t even that great. The deep and rem tracking is like 50% accurate, and the total time isnt all that accurate either. It’s probably better than nothing, but I don’t rely on it for modifying my training plan. Body battery is pure gimmick. I’ve been using a Garmin watch for almost two years, and still use it for general sleep tracking and HRV, as it integrates well with my garmin head unit and training, but understand it has major limitations and you still should listen to your body first and foremost.
I dont even know how accurate the HRV is. Mine isnt even close on tracking HR compared to my Scosche and chest straps…it will read mid 90’s when my other monitors are in the 160’s…then on the flip side, I will wear it at the gym and it reads 180 when Im lifting…how can the HRV be correct if its so far off on HR?
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The optical sensor is actually pretty good at rest with low movement, so the HRV measurement is probably not terrible, but it can get pretty bad with movement and higher HRs due to sampling rate. A chest strap like the Polar H10 is going to be much more accurate and consistent.
put on my Garmin Swim watch after 2 years of not really using it, to check if it still triggers my nickel allergy and after 3 days it looks like it does… But my Body battery never got over 15 even though my sleep wasn’t bad and I had a pretty easy day yesterday…
Another point is it is great that most of their watches don’t have nickel, but it seems all of their bands have nickel in the metal fastener… great work…
I found body battery to be useless so I switched to Whoop for recovery tracking which seemed to pretty accurately portray how I was feeling. It also very accurately let me know I was getting sick before I had symptoms (for example, had a 1% recovery day the day before I had Covid symptoms/tested positive)
In the end I got rid of Whoop as I feel like I just know how I’m feeling and a bad recovery (especially on race day) was making me feel worse than I actually felt.
I now have an Apple Watch Ultra as I find it the most enjoyable to wear as a smartwatch on a day to day basis.
Post covid, and yes i would expect that pattern. Both Stress and Body Battery are based on HRV. If you are stressed physically / mentally / medically, then your HRV will drop on any system, its expected. So with the higher than normal stress, you body battery wont be charging properly.
There is actually a lot of science behind what they do but it needs to be tuned/calibrated to individuals , we are all so different. They don’t, they just use and average and hope, so there is always an error. however for a single individual the error, big or small, is normal fairly consistent.