Max Heart Rate Changed Automatically

This isn't funny anymore. Come on, Strava!

My *actual* HR max is somewhere around 190 bpm. 

About a month ago (around the time when this thread was created) Strava changed my HR max to 181. I thought - whatever, I wasn't doing any all-out races or super hard trainings lately (6 months of almost no training since October and then 3 months of easing back to the training routine). 

During a race last week, I’ve reached 182 bpm. 

What would Strava do? Change my HR max automatically again. This time to 175 bpm... 

I wouldn't mind if Strava automatically adjusted the value depending on actual performance - if it actually made any sense! But where's the logic in this… 😒

Dear Strava, you have plenty of data to extrapolate from. Do that. If you can't, please don't mess with people's settings...

I have noticed the same issue a few weeks back.  From this thread I looked back and find the changes have been retroactively applied to my runs as well.   My max zone used to be >190 and dropped to >154.  I am getting older and probably neither are correct but by using the same scale I was previously able to judge my relative effort accurately and now that is no longer the case.  What was changed to cause this to happen and can we see an automatic fix for this in the near future?   Going back and manually resetting all of my old workouts is really not viable.   Thanks. 

Hi, I’m also affected by this issue.

Many of my past activities are now showing incorrect heart rate zones, even though my correct max HR has always been 190 bpm. Some activities even show recorded heart rates that are higher than the max HR Strava is using for the analysis, which is obviously wrong.

I have contacted Strava Support and asked them to trigger a bulk reanalysis of all my past activities. Since then, I have updated my profile to use custom heart rate zones based on my correct max HR (190 bpm), and I hope these can be used as the basis for the reanalysis as well.

Has anyone else received confirmation from Support or seen their past activities updated yet?

Thanks!

Hi ​@Kimberly22 

Thank you for your update last month. Do you have any new information about the status of this issue with incorrect heart rate zones on past activities?

Many of us are still affected, and I just wanted to check if there is any expected time frame for when the reanalysis will be completed.

Thanks in advance for any update you can share!

Hi again,
Just a quick follow-up here as well – still no changes, and no response from Support or ​@Kimberly22. I’ve now escalated the issue through a new support ticket.

I’ll update here if/when I get a resolution in case others are affected.

Thanks.

Can anyone share images of their data?

I want to see if we have the same issue 

People stopped seeing this issue?

It's still an issue for me.

Interesting that people stopped reporting it.

Does that mean that you often have to correct your max heart rate in the settings and it reverts to a wrong value afterwards?

No, the heart rate zones for my old activities were changed. I did not change them. I didn't even think it was possible.

How were they changed?

Bumping this thread up.

Would anyone have any background information on how Strava actually determines the alleged HR max?

I’ve done a race today. The activity was fairly intense but first, I don't think I’ve reached my actual maximum - that's somewhere around 190 bpm. But also, while the average for this activity was 173 and I got up to 183, for whatever reason Strava believes that my HR max is 175, and, consequently, that I ran in zone 5 for ~45 minutes. 

I’d be dead ☠️ long before that. I’m very much alive though, I promise. 
 

​@Kimberly22  if you could please share the feedback with the devs (and pass any updates back to us here) it would be great, thank you! ❤️

​@Jana_S What max. heart rate is shown in your apple watch? Could this be the source of wrong data?

That's a good idea but no, it's not it. AW doesn't have a HR max set specifically, rather the zones (which are way more realistic - 178 and above feels extremely hard and sustainable only for a short time, 175ish probably corresponding to my lactate threshold - I can run fairly long there). I wouldn't mind if Strava took over the zones from AW but it's probably using own calculation. I’m just not sure what data is used - and I fear it's not actually based on data, rather the silly (and long disproved) “220 minus age” formula seems to be used.

This could be a theory, if users don’t update their max heart rate in the Strava settings for a long time Strava just replaces it with the bogus 220 minus age. But that’s wild guessing, Strava shouldn’t have difficulties to reveal to us where the changed max heart came from.

Okay so to test this, I’ve just updated my max HR manually to 190 in my Strava settings, let's see how long till it gets changed automatically again 🧐

Just to add my experience... I'm a reasonably fit 65yo, and I am getting fitter after a heart attack, but where i expect my Max HR to be around 162, Strava keeps changing it. Recently it dropped to 151.  My Lactate Threshold also changes so I'd love to know the maths behind these changes.

Thanks

I just checked mine (I really haven’t bothered with looking at it before) and saw that my “max HR” in Strava was listed as 174 which would match your theory of 220 minus age.  Seeing as how I was maxing out around 180 in a race this last weekend, it is obvious 174 is not accurate.  I just bumped mine up a bit and will keep an eye on it to see if Strava changes it in the future.

So for me the situation is different. 

The heart rate zone was changed for previous activities. My current activities are fine.

How is it possible that heart rate zones are being changed for old activities for a certain time frame?

Hi ​@Kimberly22 

I’m still having this problem. I updated the max heartrate to 190 when I first noticed this issue, so all stats from then are good.

The problem is that the all the historic data still has a max heartrate of 164 (220 minus my age 56) - this means that the 10k local route I did for the first time in a year is compared to the wrong heartrate data in the app

****Actually it looks like a partial update has been done as the Athlete Intelligence both on the overview and the heartrate section - says correctly majority of time for the run last year as moderate and endurance - but the graph above it has 164 max and the bulk in the time in threshold and anaerobic.

Can you please provide an update as to where Strava is with this bug fix?

Many thanks

Zoe