Garmin Fitness Age : How This Metric Can be Helpful
Fitness age by Garmin is quite a common metric with a lot of their wearable devices. Fitness age is, in my opinion a key metric focused primarily on your health and well being.
The Metric, to simply put is as follows. If your fitness age is lower than your fitness age, then good. If your fitness age is higher than your age, then you need to improve. Seems pretty simple, but their is a lot of sport science calculations involved that the Garmin tech computes, and spits out a nice simple number to use as a lead indicator unique to you.
In this article I will write in simple detail about Garmin’s Fitness Age, how it is measured, how it will benefit you and lastly how accurate is this number.
What information do you Need to Provide to Get a Reading
Before a calculation can be made there is some personal information required by you to get a reading
- Body Weight
- Your Height
- Date of Birth
- Gender
- Resting Heart Rate calculated from your Watch
- Vigorous Intensity
- V02 Max
Height & Body Weight Info
Your Height and weight is a requirement to calculate your Body Mass Index. Also known as BMI. This is important for the Garmin device to understand what your health status or weight management status is in order to give a final result.
The BMI calculation is a calculation used across all weight management, or heart health management professionals. In the end this metric is really used as a general guideline.
A good example where this guide line wont work is on a bodybuilder at an elite level. Some body builders would be considered obese even though they have a low percentage of body fat. Only because of the volume or muscle density.
Date of Birth & Gender.
They way I understand it, this information will be used to compare your current fitness age to Garmin’s data base of people with normal fitness age levels of the same age and gender.
In plain English all this means is, Garmin have created a database by conducting some tests and recorded the average results to use as a bench mark. Once you enter your date of birth and gender, the Garmin device will know how to compare your results against people of your age, gender.
Another important feature is that your age will determine what you need to improve on. As you get older your ideal health score changes especially for resting heart rate, and V02max.
Resting Heart Rate
Resting heart rate is an important measure. The way I understand it is for an unhealthy person, their resting heart rate will be high and for a person who is healthy their resting heart rate will be quite low.
A healthy heart rate is dependant on your age, gender and of course fitness level. Once you allow your smart watch to take a reading, it will record your results and add this value into your final reading to determine your fitness age.
Vigorous Intensity
Vigorous intensity is the number of high intensity minutes you have accumulated during the day. By staying active will help improve respiratory, cardiovascular and overall health.
Seems simple right?, well in my experience I find it challenging
If you do not record any minutes, this will reflect poorly on your score. Make sure you keep this updated for accurate results
V02 Max
The key ingredient in determining your fitness age. Well actually V02max has been a vital metric in sports science for quite some time. Especially for athletes who are looking to find out where there V02max level is currently at.
V=Volume, 02=Oxygen, Max=maximum output. In short, this is what V02max means.
I wont go into further detail, as Garmin have provided a nice and simple explanation of what V02max is and why it is a key metric.
Why is Fitness Age be Helpful to You
At first I thought fitness age is really a measure of your V02max. But I quickly realised that I was wrong. After some extensive research on some of Garmin’s support documents.
Garmin realised that V02max is definitely a true measure of a persons fitness level, but wanted something that would make more sense for there customers. To do this Garmin then taken the most trusted metric in V02max and then reinterpret it by Age so it’s a lot more relatable to the Garmin user.
And this is why I think the Fitness age score would be helpful to you, just by improving your V02max score. It’s a proven science that can help you in your health and well ness goals or high performance goals.
