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Since around 18 September 2025 I’ve noticed a drastic decrease in Relative Effort calculation.

This leads to my Fitness & Freshness graph saying I’m much fresher than reality and it will also go down significantly week after week.

I’ve seen the recent HR zones update and I barely changed my zones, so that shouldn’t be the reason.

Any idea how it’s possible? Anyone with same problem?

 

18 September activity with low relative effort:

https://www.strava.com/activities/15852332534/overview

 

11 August similar activity with much higher relative effort (despite lower average HR):

https://www.strava.com/activities/15420377713/overview

Hi ​@Davide Luisetti, any chance that your HR max got changed automatically? That would have the impact you're describing, other people are also reporting it here: 

 

Hi ​@Davide Luisetti, any chance that your HR max got changed automatically? That would have the impact you're describing, other people are also reporting it here: 

 

Unfortunately that’s not my case… Max HR in my profile remained the same

The 118 seems to be correct, the 60 is indeed much too low. I see that you use a “Perceived Exertion”, please check that you don’t have enabled the switch “Use instead of heart rate”.

The 118 seems to be correct, the 60 is indeed much too low. I see that you use a “Perceived Exertion”, please check that you don’t have enabled the switch “Use instead of heart rate”.

I also think the 60 is completely wrong.

I checked what you said and it's not enabled.

As a double check, I tried to change the perceived exertion and the relative effort doesn't change.

I'm quite running out of ideas and hopefully our community can help :)

You could enable “Use instead of heart rate” temporarily, save the activity and then disable that switch. That leads to recalculating the Relative Effort.

Ok thanks, I’ve just done it for these few past activities, so that my Fitness & Freshness graph has now a decent accuracy. But keep using this method wouldn’t be so much precise overall.

I appreciate your advice and hopefully there can be a definitive solution soon.

Maybe other people with same problem who have already solved it.

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