9 Peak Fitness Age increasing

Soren

Just got my Suunto 9 Peak and I am confused about the Fitness Level and Age that the watch shows. I understand the concept but the fitness age has started increasing and the fitness level decreasing after i started using the watch about a week ago and I am doing more exercise now than I have done in a long time. Can someone please explain this to me?

freeheeler

@Soren
very rough explanation:
it’s like a cooper test. if you go faster, fitness age drops. but it calculates other factors into it. since it is an estimate you need to give it some time before it’s balanced in. at least it was like that in my case.

Panagiotis Kritikakos

@freeheeler I mostly get out for cycling, without monitoring hear rate (no belt, not on wrist) and my fitness age was 10-12 years less than what I really am. I was occasionally going out for running and mountaineering with wrist hr. Still, fitness age was 10-12 years less than my actual age. Since covid I started using hr belt on cycling for monitoring the post covid effects on hear rate and kept using the hr belt on most rides (and kept using wrist hr on running and hikes). The result is to get ftiness age 20+ years than what I actually am. I don’t have any custom hear rate zones set, just the default ones. Apart from speed, do hear rate zones also affect the fitness age result?

Jugger

@Panagiotis-Kritikakos For me biking doesn’t affect my fitness age or VO2max. Going slowly with high pulse in forest or just going easy makes no difference. Running in other hand affects a lot. Higher speed on zone 4-5 makes age go lower. Going slow on zone 3-5 will decrease it.

Algorithm is a bit strange though. I had my VO2max around 47 and fitness age 20 before I went for a four hour hike in Austria. After that VOmax was 37 and fitness age 58. It was a bit disappointing. I was using Hiking mode and had to climb some 400m with higher pulse rate. I think it caused my VOmax crash down.

Someone who have more knowledge can give more precise answer how it actually works. I stopped checking my fitness age and just enjoy doing sports.

freeheeler

@Panagiotis-Kritikakos
VO2max and hence fitness age is calculated only for running and hiking / walking activities. I never tried without HR but I think it is also part of the calculation.

In general, as said, going faster helps to increase VO2max. But I noticed couple of times that medium fast runs (on my scale around 7’00/km) but moderate HR increased VO2max, while going too fast and close to max HR reduces VO2max again.
no one will be able to explain the details of this algo as it would basically be sharing business secrets.
for running in flat, trailrunning, walking and hiking the algo obviously must be different.

if you really want to know VO2max a laboratory test is required. If you want a rough selftest you can do a cooper test and compare your results with the official table.
I look at fitness age only every handful of months and notice that small fluctuations are normal, but when I have a low fitness period, VO2max is also dropping more significantly

examples: avg. is around 41-42, but at some points during the selected period it was around 37

Panagiotis Kritikakos

@Jugger said in 9 Peak Fitness Age increasing:

I stopped checking my fitness age and just enjoy doing sports.
Well, that’s the point. Numbers and metrics are useful but they tend nowadays to dictate the essence of outdoors and sports, unfortunately.

@freeheeler I have noticed the info both on the watch and the manual mentioning that it’s about running/walking but to be honest I didn’t take it literally.

thanasis

@Panagiotis-Kritikakos post Covid I saw a significant difference as well but my age now is -5 years of my actual one. Before I was like 20year old anyway , I think is not very well executed but if you look at the hr patterns you may find it insightful. Also checking your heart condition through a doctor once a year or two may seem a better validator

Panagiotis Kritikakos

@thanasis Post covid I had an increase on hear rate without much effort but it didn’t last more than a 10days after tested positive. Indeed, the hr patterns can be an indicator but they’re not replacing proper heart check up.

thanasis

I think that’s one of the reasons this may not be working that well might be that it is over measuring the calories for some exercises. I have a constant feeling that it gives me higher a number. When compared to other devices, it tends to give me 30 to 50% higher which to be honest, does not seem correct.

Still it is not that critical but it would be nice to be able to measure those things relatively accurately

isazi

@thanasis said in 9 Peak Fitness Age increasing:

I think that’s one of the reasons this may not be working that well might be that it is over measuring the calories for some exercises. I have a constant feeling that it gives me higher a number. When compared to other devices, it tends to give me 30 to 50% higher which to be honest, does not seem correct.

Because it includes metabolic calories in the total.