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More Fun With Garmin EPOC

Garmin EPOC – A definition

Garmin Exercise Load Chart 4 Weeks
Garmin uses ‘Load’ and ‘EPOC’ synonymously. Here, in Column 4, you can see multiple ‘Load’ values, and the corresponding ‘Primary Benefit’, which is the topic of this post.

Since restarting regular training in February, I’ve come to enjoy the Garmin Connect Ecosystem and Garmin EPOC. EPOC is an acronym that stands for: “Excess Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption”. It means this: When you exercise, you burn fat and carbs. The ratios of fat and carbs burned for fuel, depend on cardio-vascular intensities. AFTER the workout, Oxidation, or fat-burning, is important. The amount and duration of fat-burning after an exercise can be assumed via EPOC. Garmin’s EPOC is based on the work of a company called ‘FirstBeat’, which has been studying metabolics and heart rate variability since the turn of the Century and before. Most Garmin Fitness Products these days have EPOC built into the firmware.

Garmin EPOC Assesses Points for a ‘Scoring’ System

Garmin Connect Exercise Load EPOC on Mobile App
You can find the EPOC score under Garmin Connect, by looking in the ‘Stats’ section of an uploaded or synced ride. EPOC and ‘Load’ are Synonymous.

EPOC is work, measured in Kilojoules and Calories, and then scored in a points system. It’s also called ‘Load’. The score is accumulated with time and intensity. Low intensity work translates into scores rising slowly. High intensity work means the scores will rise more quickly.

‘Load Focus’ Over A Rolling 28 Days

In Garmin Connect, I began to notice that before and after workouts, the 28-day ‘Load Focus’ would change, based on daily EPOC scores, as well as the intensities. For general fitness purposes, the ‘Load Focus’ reveals EPOC points, accumulated in three different zones:

  • Low Aerobic
  • High Aerobic
  • Anaerobic

Every ride leads to gains in any of these three zones, and losses as the 28-day window ‘time’s out’. This helps people understand the benefits of consistency, and it can help them better assess their conditioning needs.

How to find ‘Load Focus’ in the Garmin Connect App.

***This is for the iPhone version of Garmin Connect. I own an Android, but have not updated it in months. If asked, I’ll append a new post with that information and directions. Thanks ***

Open your Garmin Connect App, then click on ‘•••’ on the bottom right hand corner.

Next, tap on ‘Performance Stats’.

Tap on ‘Training Status’.

And then, tap on ‘Load’.

You’ll get three horizontal bars, highlighting ‘Load Focus’ (EPOC) points at different intensities.

Load Focus and EPOC

The chart for ‘Load Focus‘ shows the accumulated, 28-day totals, for EPOC in the three zones. The zones are color-coded, and include an oval ‘Optimal Range‘. I’ll be honest. I have NO IDEA where this value comes from, or how it changes. I’ve asked Garmin for more information. I SUSPECT it’s related to the Acute Training Load, Chronic Training Load, and even Sleep Scores and Sleep Strain Scores. However, that’s pure conjecture. Still, it’s not a bad algorithm for cardio fitness!

Here’s a chart of mine from last week.

Garmin Load Focus EPOC
This was taken prior to a midweek workout. You can see that my conditioning is ‘Balanced’, and all of the EPOC 28-day summaries are within the ‘Optimal Range’ ovals.

 

Now, the workout consisted of multiple 75-second intervals at high intensity, with a 150-second recovery (1:2 w/r ratio), and lasted roughly an hour.

Garmin Connect Power & Heart Rate Chart Connect APP
This is what the wattage and heart rate chart are from this indoor workout.

When we look at a post I made earlier this year on Garmin’s Post-Ride Analysis Reports, EPOC dictates Aerobic and Anaerobic Training Effect. In the “Olden Days”, I would look at time spent in different heart rate zones, to make an assessment about just what a workout might have accomplished. Adding EPOC points and simplifying training zones to, “Breathing, Heaving, Gasping”, adds another degree of interpretation to the information.

Garmin Connect Heart Rate Zone Workout Results
This 60 minute workout included 26 minutes in ‘Zone 2’, just under 5 minutes in Zone 5, and over 10 minutes in Zone 4. The EPOC for this ride was 295 points.

 

Post-Ride EPOC Zone Placement

With a hard workout that included a lot of time in Heart Rate Zones 4 and 5, almost 25% of the entire ride, EPOC ended up at 295 points. You’ve seen the ‘Before’ chart, now, let’s compare the ‘after’ chart, and see where those ‘Load’ points went.

Garmin Load Focus EPOC
EPOC Prior to the Workout.

 

Post Dec 6 Garmin EPOC Load Focus Placement
Here’s the Post-Ride Garmin EPOC Load Focus.

Out of 295 Points Earned on this workout, 139 of them were added to the ‘Anaerobic’ zone. FirstBeat does not publish their algorithm, but 139 points is just under one point for every second spent in ZONE 5 of my heart rate intensity.

For the ‘High Aerobic Load’, 155 of the 295 points were placed in that zone. This was enough to skew my Load Focus from ‘Balanced’ to ‘High Aerobic’.

Notice also that ‘Low Aerobic’ did not move. It remained at 1066 points for the 28 days. This leads me to wonder if the points are not assessed position until after the workout is completed. This would make sense.

CONCLUSION – EPOC Is A Scoring System That Works With Heart Rate (and Wattage) To More Accurately Assess Fitness Improvements

I always suspected that EPOC scores directly affected Acute Training Load and Load Focus. I’ll try to assess just how Load changes the Acute Training Load in Garmin Connect in another post. For now, however, it’s just fun to see how a ride with varying intensities of heart rate and power, changes assessments in Garmin Connect. I like EPOC. It’s got the backing of Dozens of studies. The earliest I found has been 1992, and I believe FirstBeat was founded in 2002. EPOC is built into the Garmin Connect Ecosystem. As technology measuring heart rate and heart rate variability has improved, the algorithms for EPOC have also improved.

I think there’s something ‘there’, there, and my clients are enjoying the combination of heart rate, heart rate variability, and power, for a more Holistic approach to cardio fitness on bikes!

Thanks for reading, and ENJOY THE RIDE!

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Garmin EPOC, Aerobic Training Effect, and Anaerobic Training Effect

EPOC, Aerobic TE and Anaerobic TE Are Great Fields to Help Measure Fitness

Aerobic TE, Anaerobic TE ,and EPOC
Sometimes it’s more fun to just ride, and get general ideas about fitness.

I’ve been using Garmin products since the early 2000’s. I love their adaptability, and their thorough approach to displays. Riders and runners love to complain about Garmin setup and use, but no other product is as complete or has so many features. EPOC is a cost-effective way to measure fitness and the results of a ride.

On July 1st, 2020, Garmin announced that they had purchased FirstBeat Technologies. This REALLY excited me, because I have studied FirstBeat since at least 2003. FirstBeat is a Finnish Company that has studied Heart Rate Variability (HRV), and how that applies to fitness. I’m currently working on HRV software through www.fitnesshrv.com, but that product is mostly designed around indoor use. For Cyclists, Runners and Swimmers who own Garmin head units and watches, we can use FirstBeat technology to gain insights into just how a ride is improving your fitness.

EPOC (Excess Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption)

I first began studying EPOC in the mid 2000’s, when it was incorporated into the Suunto T6 fitness watch. I LOVED helping people in SPIN classes, who did not have access to wattage at the time, work on improving their fitness with this device. PUBLISHED SCIENCE shows that EPOC can help exercisers measure their efforts smarter. The TL:DR goes like this:

  • When you exercise, you stress the body.
  • The Frequency, Intensity, and Duration of the Stress (FIT) affects your heart, heart rate, and heart rate variability.
  • This stress leads to EPOC.
  • Garmin’s Training Load value serves as a “Score” for EPOC.
  • This Score can be used to modulate training. The Score also breaks down into Aerobic Training Effect and Anaerobic Training Effect.

Here’s a great link to a video that can further explain what’s going on.

EPOC Scores Lead to Aerobic TE and Anaerobic TE

In my zeal to measure all things PHYSICAL, I migrated from EPOC and Training Effect over the years, to wattage. But recently, I’ve been mountain biking a lot more, and I’m using EPOC with every ride. One of the most important aspects of all endurance exercise is finding the right balance between Aerobic Training Effect, Anaerobic Training Effect, and overall Volume. We don’t want to do too much, too often, but we do want to Progress and Periodize with the seasons.

FirstBeat defines Training Effect like this:

Training Effect (TE) represents the degree of homeostasis disturbance resulting from a session of physical activity. The Training Effect is based principally on EPOC values during exercise, which is further scaled based on the individuals fitness or activity level. The higher the TE-value the higher is also the expected increase in maximal performance after the exercise. EPOC (and TE) gets higher when either exercise intensity or duration is increased.

Training Effect describes the effect of exercise on a 0-5 scale:

0.0 – 0.9 = no effect
1.0 – 1.9 = minor effect (recovery training)
2.0 – 2.9 = maintaining effect
3.0 – 3.9 = improving effect
4.0 – 4.9 = highly improving effect
5.0 = temporarily overreaching effect

It is important to remember that a high TE is not needed in every exercise – for example doing an fitness-improving exercise session (TE e.g. 3.0) at least once a week combined with two weekly maintaining exercise sessions (TE e.g. 2.0) is enough to maintain (in trained individuals) or even improve (in sedentary individuals) the person’s aerobic fitness.

Every ride and every run will yield not just an EPOC value, but also an AEROBIC Training Effect, and an ANAEROBIC Training Effect. If you’re a mountain biker, wattage tends to be incredibly stochastic, and can be hard to interpret. Instead, if you follow my lead and add those fields to a profile page on your Garmin head unit or watch, you can observe and measure Training Effect instead!

EPOC becomes Training Load in Garmin Connect

If you own a Garmin Fitness device, you probably have a Garmin Connect account. Garmin Connect is FULL of great information! However, getting to the areas where you can assess fitness and start to understand how your training is affecting your performance, can be a little hard to find.

Try this:

  • Enter your username and password into Garmin Connect and go to the main page. It should look something like this:
Garmin Connect Dashboard Page - Hard to find EPOC in here...
The Garmin Connect Dashboard Page can be a little confusing. Lots of good information, but crowded and hard to find exactly what you’re looking for. Hard to find EPOC in here…
  • Now move your mouse to the area on the left titled “REPORTS”.

Click on “Cycling”, and “Training Status”. That SHOULD bring you to a page that looks something like this:

Garmin Reports Training Status Page
Garmin’s Training Status Page. This page will help you better understand just what your EPOC, Aerobic TE, and Anaerobic TE are doing for your fitness.
  • Let’s start at the “STATUS” area of Yellow, Orange, and Green blocks. Mousing over the blocks shows you whether the day’s work was ‘Productive’ (Green), ‘Unproductive’ (Orange), or ‘Maintaining’ (Yellow). Purple is ‘Peaking’, and black means you’re in a state of ‘Detraining’.
  • The next graph shows ‘Vo2 max’. Now, this is important. This is an ESTIMATION of Vo2. It is NOT ALWAYS all that accurate. I’ve had it be SPOT-ON, and I’ve had it be off by as much as 5 points. I’m not going to argue the merits of the claim here, but the important thing to focus on is whether that value is IMPROVING or not, and if not, why. Here’s a video link showing a man and a woman performing Vo2 max tests in a lab, and comparing those values to the Garmin Firstbeat data. The important thing to remember is that the Vo2max values are a FEATURE that comes from EPOC and Training Effect.

Next, let’s look at Exercise Load.

Garmin Exercise Load Graph
Garmin Exercise Load defaults to blue, but when you mouse over it, you get EPOC, as well as a colored breakdown of Training Effect.

Now, look at the colors, as well as the scale for this chart. It’s revealing our DAILY EPOC value from rides, as well as the Training Effect Breakdown. Most of my recent rides have been aerobic in nature, as I regain some fitness after a haywire heart concern that affected my ability to recover and sleep. If you look about five rides back from the right, you’ll see a bar that is both Orange and Purple. That was a High Intensity day, with an EPOC near 130. This is what the summary looked like on the Garmin head unit, after the ride.

Garmin Head Unit Post-Ride Aerobic and Anaerobic Training Effect Summary
The harder the terrain, the more power you need to generate. The more power you generate, the more Anaerobic the benefit. EPOC at 128 breaks down based on HRV data, to a 3.4 Aerobic TE (impacting aerobic Tempo), and 1.6 Anaerobic TE, which yielded a bit of improvement on those switchback climbs.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, take a look at the graph on the page that shows 7-day Training Load.

Garmin Connect 7-day Training Load
The 7-Day Training Load shows the Accumulated EPOC for an individual. The black dots are the mathematical sum, the Green band is a form of Artificial Intelligence that provides a SUGGESTED EPOC value, as it relates to your recent, empirical, and goal history.

When you’re cycling through a post-ride summary, the Training Load value looks like this on your Garmin head unit.

Garmin Connect 7-day Training Load shows accumulated EPOC
The Garmin head or watch unit can provide a general sense of training status productivity. Right now, my status is “High”, because I’m intentionally overreaching on my chronic fitness, to get to a point where I can start considering HiiT intervals again, which should raise my Vo2max, as well as my Anaerobic Training Effect. EPOC for the last 7 days reads 783.

Training Effect and EPOC recommendations

The Published Science on FirstBeat’s claims shows that the values can guide users to greater gains, without further investments in expensive products. Let’s face it – these products are never cheap, and there’s always a push for more hardware integration. We can achieve this with Garmin’s NIRS technology, as well as their chest straps. The accuracy may not be as precise as a watt-meter, but it may not always be necessary to measure every Newton-Meter or KiloJoule, etc.

In general terms, try this:

  1. BE CONSISTENT. Ride, run, or swim for an EPOC of between 100 and 150 points. Use those numbers for a few weeks, and then compare them to the SUGGESTIONS on the Garmin Connect 7-day Training Load chart.
  2. VARY your Aerobic Training Effect and Anaerobic Training Effect. There ARE SUGGESTIONS for these values as well. There’s a hidden page that can show your Load Focus as it compares to the ‘Optimal Range’ Recommendations. I have been riding between a 3.0 and a 4.0 on the Aerobic Training Effect, and a 0 to 2.0 on the Anaerobic Training Effect. That will change with my fitness and my needs, but it follows my own acronym of ‘SMART’ (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Repeatable, and Timely). It also allows me to study my Mountain Bike suspension instead of my fitness. Maybe some day I’ll even be able to merge the two, though it’s probably too late for that this year

Here’s how to get to the LOAD FOCUS OPTIMAL RANGE PAGE.

  • In the ‘Reports’ page, scroll to the top and look for ‘TRAINING STATUS’. Below that, you’ll find a row of information. Look for ‘LOAD FOCUS’. Click on the BLUE SCRIPT, and you’ll get something that looks like this:
    Garmin Reports Training Status Load Focus Area
    On the “Reports” page, scroll to the top, find ‘Load Focus’, and click on the Blue Text. Mine currently says “Above Targets”, but yours may say something different, depending on fitness, frequency, and goals.

     

  • You’ll end up with a page that looks like this:
    Load Focus 7-Day Graphic Values vs Optimal Values
    Notice that the OPTIMAL RANGE recommendations are within the dotted line. The values show the EPOC points for each zone over 7 days, and when you mouse over the QUESTION MARK, you get an explanation of just what those values achieve in terms of Cardio-Vascular fitness.

     

EPOC 100-150, Aerobic TE of 3-4, and Anaerobic TE between 0.5 and 2.0

Try it for about six weeks and tell me what you think. I’ll investigate more intensity once I get a solid aerobic base under my legs, maybe a 7-day training load of about 1100 or more, and then see what the HiiT intervals tell me.

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