Gamifying your body sounds bad but it’s the goal of Garmin with its Garmin Body Battery. If you’ve ever played games like Pokemon or Stardew Valley on mobile, you’ll be acquainted with the health and stamina bars. You’ll figure out how much you can do or the damage you’ll take as you watch the bar go down. In a way, the Garmin Body Battery does the same, only in real life. We’ll explain how.
What Is Garmin Body Battery?
Garmin entered the smartwatch innovation war to become the third-largest smartwatch company in the world, next to Samsung and Apple. It is trusted for offering fitness watches and devices such as the Fenix and the Garmin Swim. Both watches have several health-related features like a heartrate monitor, step counter, sleep monitor, pulse oximetry monitor, and of course, the body battery monitor.
To answer the question, the Garmin Body Battery Energy Monitor is a feature on Garmin smartwatches that tells you when your body is at its best and when it needs rest. As mentioned, it acts just like the stamina bar on video games. It aims to give you an impression of how much physical energy you have on a scale of 1-100. This bar adds or subtracts points depending on your own actions like in any game. This is seen when you work out or sleep, as it gives out a corresponding plus or minus score.
You can monitor your body battery directly from your Garmin smartwatch or through the dedicated companion app, Garmin Connect.
Download Garmin Connect from Google Play Store
Download Garmin Connect from the App Store
How Does Garmin Battery Work?
Garmin’s energy monitor uses your heart rate, stress levels, sleep, and activities to create a versatile model of your physiology. This created model is a cumulative one that changes and adapts based on a user’s daily routine or lifestyle.
Data for the model is collected 24/7 so long as you wear and connect the watch to the app. This allows you to see comparative graphs of your data on a daily, hourly, or even monthly basis. It would also let you see other immediate data like your pulse rate and hydration levels to enhance your daily performance and training routines.
For the Garmin Body Battery monitor, it is generally best to see it as a sample of how “well-rested” you are. It presents an “energy” number of 1 to 100, it gives you a quick look at your body’s general activities for the duration of your watch wearing.
What Are the Factors in Play?
The fitness functions of Garmin’s watches rely on the integrated features of each watch model but, they would almost always have HRV, heartbeat, stress, sleep, and activity monitors for their fitness models.
1. Heart Rate Variability
The HRV is a combined metric for your body’s “fight or flight” mechanism. That mechanism controls your heart rate, anxiety, and immune system. The model created from this data tries to figure out if your body is in a state of high stress or relaxation by comparing it to past data. This creates a cumulative mathematical model of your average lifestyle. This model works due to your body’s sympathetic and parasympathetic responses changing throughout the day. This then allows the model to make minute “energy” changes to the Garmin Body Battery.
2. Stress Levels and Amount of Rests
Your Body Battery is also reliant on stress, sleep, and activities. The model is updated with your daily activities and records them. It subtracts your body energy whenever you exert effort due to physical and strenuous activities. Examples of such activities include running, weight lifting, or intense training. The energy level also falls without enough sleep or an improper sleep cycle. This is also true if you exercise or work out at bad times like a few hours before going to sleep.
On the reverse side, the model adds energy whenever you get enough sleep. This is readily apparent when the battery fills up just after waking up in the morning. Other plus factors include having workout routines at reasonable hours, going to sleep on time, and having enough sleep (usually eight or so hours).
3. Lifestyle Factors
Other outside or lifestyle factors also come into play on how Garmin Body Battery calculates your energy level. For example, if you are a heavy coffee drinker, you might see your stress levels spike up because of your caffeine intake. Or if you get sick and have an infection, the Garmin Body Battery might reflect it with a lower energy number.
Should the Body Battery Remain High All the Time?
You shouldn’t worry when your battery does fall to five points or below since it’s not like in games where you’ll faint or need hospitalization. It just means that you need more rest or a healthier sleep schedule.
The Garmin Body Battery is used as a means to make changes or notice differences in your lifestyle and exercise routine due to the differences in energy the statistics give you as the days pass. These changes could be as little as limiting your caffeine intake to one a day to as major as shifting around your schedule to have a proper eight-hour sleep cycle. The monitor is best combined with a proper exercise routine and a fully certified trainer.
Also Read: Best Sleep Tracker Apps for Android and iOS
Which Garmin Smartwatches Have the Body Battery Feature?
The Garmin Body Battery Energy Monitor is only available on select Garmin wearables. Based on Garmin’s list, here are all smartwatches that are Body Battery-enabled.
- Approach S62
- Enduro series
- Fenix 6 series
- Forerunner 245 / 245 Music, 45 / 45S, 745, 945
- Garmin Swim 2
- Instinct and Instinct Solar series
- Legacy Hero series (Captain Marvel, First Avenger) and Legacy Saga series (Darth Vader, Rey)
- Lily
- MARQ collection
- Quatix 6
- Tactix Delta series
- Venu and Venu Sq series
- Vivoactive 4 / 4S
- Vivosmart 3 / 3S, 4, Luxe, and Style
The Garmin Body Battery Energy Monitor and its other fitness helpers have seen active inclusion in Garmin’s fitness watches. It’s likely they’ll continue to introduce even more compatible devices in the future.
Also read: The Best Garmin Watches on Sale Right Now
Should You Get It?
The Garmin Body Battery Energy Monitor is one of the newer innovations in wearable technology from Garmin. While it is still a new entry into the fitness market, the technology behind it is rock solid. It is based on data modeling from Firstbeat Analytics. The company has a good record with several professional groups. These include Team Conalgo CSF during the Giro d’Italia, the Edinburgh Rugby Club, and downhill rider Marcelo Gutierrez.
Aside from the body monitor, Garmin’s fitness wearables also have a wide assortment of tools like heart rate and activity monitors. All of which are important for people who need to train their bodies. Looking at the future, getting a Body Battery-compatible watch isn’t just a good idea; it’s an investment for your own body’s future.
