This may be just the ticket to get you off of the couch and out on the road and giving you the incentive, you need to make being active your NEW norm!

The Garmin Forerunner 45 hits the mark as one of Garmin’s most capable running watches.
The 45 does a great job of being the smartwatch to go with if you’re into tracking your sports activities. If you’re looking for a running or sport specific watch, then this is the one for you.

The Forerunner 45 also has another selling point, it's price structure of being around $200. While letting you have the ability to download structured workouts, including those from the company’s free ‘Garmin Coach’ adaptive/dynamic training programs, as well as incident detection and assistance (which notifies friends/family if you get into trouble). Just the ticket if you're heading off the regular running tracks and off into the hilly mountain paths.

It has an optical HR sensor on it for tracking 24×7 HR and stress. It supports more than just running, with other sports including cycling, treadmills, and yoga, but doesn’t have quite the number of sports their other units have. And finally, it adds Connect IQ custom watch faces but stops short of allowing full Connect IQ apps or data fields.

Below are the specs on what's improved with the 45 over the Garmin 35.
– Added two sizes: 39mm (Forerunner 45S) and 42mm (Forerunner 45)
– Added color display
– Added structured workout support
– Added training plans support (including calendar/scheduled workouts)
– Added Garmin Coach compatibility
– Added Connect IQ Watch Face support
– Added incident (crash/fall) detection
– Added safety tracking/assistance
– Added Pace/Speed alerts
– Added stress widget/tracking
– Added VO2Max calculation
– Added 24×7 HR tracking widget/tracking
– Added body battery widget/tracking
– Added new Garmin Gen3 ELEVATE optical HR sensor
– Added more sport modes
– Changed from square watch to round watch
– Changed from 4 to 5 buttons (which actually makes a world of difference)
– Changed all-day battery from 9 days down to 7 days
– Of note: GPS-on battery life remains the same at 13 hours (GPS-mode)

The above are the new features which enhance the Garmin 45. But just in case your not as familiar with Garmin’s previously included functionality, we’ve listed the noteworthy ones here below.
– Built-in GPS (no reliance on phone for GPS)
– Workout support for a few sports, with customizable pages/fields
– 24×7 activity tracking, including sleep
– Optical heart rate sensor in the watch
– Smartphone notifications
– Live tracking when paired with a smartphone
– Weather/calendar widgets
– Vibration/Audio alerts
– Uploading to Garmin Connect Training Log website via phone or USB
– Broadcasting of your HR over ANT+ (from wrist to other devices)
– Automatic sync to 3rd party sites like Strava, MyFitnessPal, TrainingPeaks and many more

Probably the biggest difference between the new Forerunner 45/45S and the Forerunner 35 is the basics of the device. While the interface of the Forerunner 35 was roughly based on past budget Garmin watches, the new FR45 instead lends itself to Garmin’s higher end watches. Which, we think makes it easier to use. Note that anytime we refer to the FR45, we’re referring to both FR45 and FR45S. They’re technologically identical in every way except the bezel is simply larger on the FR45 (not the screen size, just the bezel).

Now with that screen, you can toggle between a couple of different stock watch faces. Though unlike Garmin’s higher end units, you can’t customize the stock watch faces (changing data and such). You can only tweak the accent color. But you can download thousands of custom watch faces from Garmin Connect IQ store, which is Garmin’s free app store. You can even make your own watch faces, including adding in photos as the background. Not bad for an activity watch at this price point.

The Garmin Forerunner45 captures all the normal activity tracking metrics you’d expect, including steps (as well as distance), sleep, and heart rate. It doesn’t capture stairs, however, as it lacks a barometric altimeter to measure height.
These metrics are consolidated into widgets, which you can display on the watch by pressing the up/down buttons. Note that the FR45 doesn’t support downloading Connect IQ Widgets like some of Garmin’s higher end watches, but there’s plenty of stock ones to choose from on the watch itself. Here’s a gallery of some of those.

Keep in mind that the 45 is now tracking your activity constantly, it’s also sending that over to Garmin Connect Mobile (the smartphone app) via Bluetooth Smart. From there, you can view these activity stats, challenge friends/family, and also see the stats on the Garmin Connect website. In addition, some 3rd party sites and healthcare providers can also receive this data if you’ve authorized them to. Which helps if you get into an uncomfortable place and need help right away. This is one feature that can provide you with some peace of mind that you are never truly alone, especially if your out on a remote running trail!

Say Good Night!
It will automatically track your sleep if you wear it at night. Technically you can set your regular sleep timeframe to any portion of the day, though it will only track one ‘sleep’ per day. Meaning – it doesn’t track naps. In my experience, it does a pretty good job of nailing my sleep, even with having toddlers running around and waking us at all sorts of random hours. The unit will track the exact sleep cycle, and then log it into Garmin Connect. You can plot and trend this over various timeframes.

The Garmin 45 benefits from a new optical HR sensor ‘package’, the same exact package as the Forerunner 245/945/MARQ. This is used to track your heart rate 24×7, as well as during workouts. For heart rate, it includes modest updates over the sensors used about a year ago, though a bit more significant update over the much older Forerunner 35 sensors. Note that while the sensor hardware itself on the FR45 compared to that of the other new units noted, it doesn’t have PulseOx enabled.

From a continuous heart rate standpoint, it tracks this constantly and then uploads it into Garmin Connect mobile as well. Using your resting HR is a great indicator of when you’re over-trained, fatigued, or when sickness is on the way.

Just a Few More Basic Functions:
The Forerunner 45 supports smartphone notifications like all previous Garmin watches. You’ll see the notifications based on how you’ve configured them on your smartphone via the normal phone notification center, and then they show up on the unit itself. You can then open up a given notification to get more detail about it (such as a longer text message): You can also check missed/past notifications in the notification’s widget seen in the widget gallery a bit earlier in this section. Note that unlike the higher end Forerunner watches, the FR45 doesn’t support a privacy mode for smartphone notifications.

Now Let the Sports Begin!
The Forerunner 45 is all about being a sports watch, or at least, a running-specific watch. But it does monitor other workouts, including cycling and yoga. But face facts, you’re buying it for running (or perhaps walking).

To begin with sports, you do indeed have a few options when it comes to which sports are on the device. By default, that’s: Running (outdoors), Treadmill, Cycling (outdoors), Walk, and Cardio (catch-all bucket).

However, you can use the Garmin Connect Mobile app to add other sports, which include: Indoor Track, Bike Indoor, Walk Indoor, Elliptical, Stair Stepper, Yoga, and the mythical ‘Other’. You can have a max of 6 activities loaded onto the watch at any one point in time. In other words, they duplicated what Fitbit does here (for no particularly good reason).

No matter whether you’ve modified the sports or just kept with the defaults, to start recording a new workout you’ll simply tap the upper right button and then select the sport. Once you’ve done that, it’ll ask you if you want to execute any scheduled workouts for that day. So if you had something loaded up from Garmin Coach for example, or something else on your calendar, it’ll offer those to you first (which you can skip).
After that, you’re at the GPS and HR waiting screen. It’s here that it’ll go off and find GPS. This Sony GPS chipset supports GPS, GPS+GLONASS, and GPS+Galileo.

As part of this, the 45 will also ensure it has a lock on your heart rate via the optical HR sensor on the back of the unit. Generally, that’s instantaneous since it’s constantly tracking HR 24×7 anyway.

If you press down again before you start the workout you can tweak some of the settings for that sport, in this case – running. First is the ability to select a structured workout. While before, it asked us if we wanted to do the day’s scheduled workout if you had nothing scheduled/setup – then this is a chance to select one from your library of workouts. Or, you can just do a one-off interval session where you define the duration of the interval, the repeats, the rest, and the cool-down/warm-up.

Next, you can customize your data screens during the workout. The FR45 is pretty basic, mirroring that of the FR30/35 before it. Here’s what you get to start with (all are three-field pages by default). All of these are customizable:
Data Page 1: Distance, Timer, Pace
Data Page 2: HR Zone, Heart Rate, Calories
Data Page 3: Lap Time, Lap Distance, Lap Pace
Data Page 4: Time of day clock page
Data Page 5 (Optional): 1, 2, or 3 metrics each of your choosing

Available Data Metrics: Timer, Distance, Pace, Calories, Heart Rate, HR Zone, Lap Time, Lap Distance, Lap Pace, Average Pace, Cadence, Steps, Time of Day.

In the case of cycling, you’ll get the speed variants of each of the above (i.e., MPH/KPH) instead of pace.

Next, you can configure alerts. Options include heart rate (zone, or custom BPM range), run/walk (time-based), time, distance, pace (specific pace), or calories. What’s nice is that you can configure alerts but toggle them on/off quickly to use on different runs. For example, you might setup run/walk for your long run, but then toggle it off for your other runs that week. It’s a single toggle, versus having to set it up again.

You can also configure laps. By default, auto-lap is enabled at 1-mile (or 1-kilometer depending on if you use statute or metric). But you can manually lap at any time with the lap key. Or you can turn auto-lap off.

Finally, there’s auto pause, which is off by default but can be enabled to automatically pause the timer when you stop. Unlike some of Garmin’s higher end watches though – there’s no configurable threshold on this though. Also, the GPS options are in here as well, where you can toggle between the aforementioned GPS modes (GPS/GLONASS/GALILEO).

With the setup process complete you’re ready to get moving and then you can see your results displayed on the various screens. If you’re running a custom, structured training session, you’ll also get a custom workout screen which shows the specific targets of your workout. Say you're doing a run, it will give you a 5-second beeping countdown to each segment of your workout followed by the specific targets for that portion. It’ll also give a guide chart while doing that section with the target, as well as the specific time/distance/etc remaining for that portion.

It works well and is easy to follow. And in many ways, this is the most important part of this watch. It’s what fundamentally separates it from the Apple Watch and others which lack the depth and customization of the structured workout program.

You have to do a test workout first (it’s only 9 minutes), and then based on the results of that test workout, it’ll fill in exactly what the structure and intensity is to reach your goal time. You can adjust which days of the week you can work out, and your preference for the long run too.

Once you’re done with your run, you’ll go ahead and press the start button to pause it. At this juncture you can eat some ice cream and then press resume to continue running, or, you can end it. Then you'll get a summary page, including your current VO2Max level.

Then the watch is automatically transmitting this information over to your phone via Bluetooth Smart. It’s there that you can see much more detailed information on Garmin Connect Mobile (the smartphone app). Additionally, you can also look at your workouts on the Garmin Connect website as well.

Further, if you’ve connected Strava, MyFitnessPal, TrainingPeaks or any other sites, all of those will receive a copy of your workout instantly as well. Just remember on Strava to add emoji, it increases your likes (so they say).

The one last thing we want to touch on in the sports section is Garmin’s Incident Detection and Assistance features, which are seeing widespread rollout to Garmin devices – especially with these three (FR45/245/945) product launches. Both features are safety focused and have two slightly different purposes.

Incident Detection: This will automatically detect an incident while running/cycling (in a workout specifically) and notifies your predefined contacts with a text message and a live track link to see exactly where you are.

Safety Assistance: This allows you to, with one button, send a predefined message to emergency contacts with your initial location, followed by a live tracking link. The main scenario here being, you feel unsafe and want someone to be aware of that.

Both of these features depend on you having your phone with you. Since the Forerunner 45 doesn’t have cellular in it, you need to be within range of your phone. Both features can be canceled in the event they’re triggered accidentally. And both features are set up on Garmin Connect Mobile first. It’s here you define emergency contacts.

Once that’s done, the crash detection will occur while cycling or running during a workout. This is different than Apple, which has fall detection 24×7. Essentially, Garmin is looking for forward speed, followed by a significant stopping accelerometer event – and then critically – no further forward progress. Meaning, if you were running along and jumped down a big ledge and kept running, that wouldn’t trigger it, since you continued going. Whereas if you were running, jumped off the ledge and then face-planted, that would likely trigger it since you ceased making forward progress.

Rounding things out – the thing that makes the Forerunner 45 a more capable running watch than the Apple Watch or Samsung Galaxy Active (or Fitbit Versa/Ionic) is the structured workout and complete tie-in with all of the aspects of Garmin Connect/Garmin Connect Mobile. 

To Sum Things Up:
There’s no question that Garmin packed an incredible number of features into the FR45, at least from an upgrade perspective over the FR35. If sports and fitness are what you’re after in a sports activity tracker – then the FR45’s super strong offering is all ready to strap on to your wrist.

Yes, we know it’s not yet Easter, but its not that far away either! Parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles will be making their trips to the local candy specialty shops all over the country for those special treats that are only created at this time of year. From chocolate bunny’s, to molasses coconut eggs, and don’t forget the peanut butter eggs as well as the unique treats that are common to so many local areas. Why the frantic journey to those candy kitchens at this time of year? Because we have been conditioned to get out and purchase an abundance of Easter candy to give as presents to our kids, friends and family!

Now don’t get us wrong, we are in no way saying to stop buying those candy treats, we’re not saying to cut out surprising the children with their long looked for Easter baskets. But what we are saying is to cut back the abundance of sugary goodies that nest within those baskets.

What you can do is to try to fill your children’s baskets with more toys than candy and hide the jelly beans, and chocolate kisses soon after they find them. No matter how much work you put into hiding the sugar, the kids still seem to find it and eat it as fast as you can bury it again.

At a time when tech-type activity often supersedes our children’s physical activity, and unhealthy food choices are marketed directly toward younger age groups, we as adults and parents must work even harder at improving our children’s healthy choices,” says Kurt David, an elementary school counselor and fitness enthusiast. Since you can’t be there to stop every sugary treat from getting into their hands, you can make a plan to incorporate fun activities into your Easter routine that emphasize having fun and staying active.

Below are some great Easter activity ideas to keep your kids moving this holiday.

Easter for a lot of families means having an Easter egg hunt. Whether it’s outside in the yard, a local field, that’s maybe sponsored by an organization or just hiding some plastic or even colored hard-boiled eggs around the house like we did when I was a kid. What you can do to turn this into a healthy activity that will get the kids, and maybe the adults can join in as well to find those eggs and see what’s inside the plastic ones or written on the old-fashioned hard-boiled eggs. When the kids find them, they are sure to be looking at you with an expression on their faces that screams: “What’s Up With This” or, “What’s Going On”? Where’s the candy or cash?

Easter eggs that one would normally fill with candy or money, can now be filled with pieces of paper inside with exercises written on them. These don’t have to be deadlifts and shoulder presses, you can make these activities fun. You can make these exercises unique to your home, garden or nearby park. Here are some examples of what you can put inside the plastic Easter eggs:

Hop like a bunny for 30 seconds
Jump as far as you can 3 times
10 Jumping jacks
Run backwards to the end of the grass and back
Climb up the tree
Swing from the tire swing
Touch your toes then reach for the sky 10 times
Hopscotch
Jump as high as you can 3 times
Balance on one leg for 20 seconds (both sides)

When the kids are done searching for their eggs, they should find a mix of exercises and candy in their plastic Easter eggs. As you can see from reading the list, these activities don’t really seem like exercises. They are just fun ways to get your whole family involved, moving more and having fun, together!

Now you're saying this is a great idea for the younger kids, but how do you get the older ones active during the Easter holiday season, and for the rest of the year as well? Well, instead of having them find a large chocolate bar or video game in their basket, how about an activity watch?

One that tracks their distance, the pace they're moving at, even their heart rate as they're moving and the calories they're burning up while doing these activities. Heck, it will even remind them when it’s time to move! One such activity tracker is the Garmin Forerunner 25 GPS Running Watch  For the price, it packs a lot of features into this little wrist-based monitor with a built-in GPS that when they get finished with their workout, that you create for them, they can upload it to Garmin Connect and if their friends are into getting fit, they can compete against one another to see just how well each of them are doing. And you can also keep tabs on them as well if you join the Garmin Community. How good is that to help them stay motivated while getting fit, instead of eating a couple of hundred calories of sugar?

So, now that we’ve given you a few ideas on how to keep the kids motivated, from the age of 3 all the way up to seventeen and beyond it could be a game changer for getting them motivated to move instead of playing video games or watching a couple of hours of cartoons.

It’s your call this Easter Holiday, so what is the bunny going to put in your basket? Candy or a protein bar?

Ok, it’s still Winter, even though metrological Spring is only a few days, (really 1 Day away, being March 1st.). And the question is, is winter winning out on keeping your exercise routines on the back burner?

Sure, it’s cold outside! The winter winds are blowing pretty strong, especially in the northeast where there is still a lot more darkness than daylight out there. These few things and maybe some others not mentioned can go a long way from keeping you away from the gym or running your favorite trail and keep you on the couch, under a comforter while you watch Netflix and scarf down a pizza.

Let's face it -- it's tough to find the motivation to exercise outside these days. During the work week, sometimes both legs of our daily commutes are completed in utter darkness. And while the weekend sunshine is appreciated, it doesn't do much to warm up our wintry surroundings. But before you throw in the towel and restrict yourself to the crowded, stuffy gym for the next few months, it may be worth giving the idea of an outdoor winter workout a second thought.

One thing this cold weather helps out with is burning more calories. As the body works harder to regulate its core temperature among the elements, you'll burn a few more calories during your wintry workout compared to one conducted indoors. While the calorie burn varies with each person's body mass and the extremity of the temperature, it can be a nice morale booster to get more out of your sweat session knowing that the cold temps are helping you to burn more as you run, jog, walk along on your exercise regimen.

Like any serious-minded person who embraces exercise as becoming part of their new, healthy, lifestyle. Working out means commitment to reaching a goal or set of goals, after all, why bother with the demands of getting up each day and pushing your body if you don’t have a set goal in mind. Reaching and surpassing those goals means tracking your progress. And a good way to do this is with a reliable fitness tracker. For our purposes, we like to recommend a heart rate monitor, with GPS capabilities. One that fits the overall requirements of tracking your progress is the Garmin Forerunner 735XT GPS Running Multisport Watch  The Garmin Forerunner 735XT is a GPS-enabled running watch with multi-sports features that will track not only your daily, weekly, monthly runs but on days when you do hit the indoor gym for strength training, the Forerunner 735 will track the energy you expend and your heart rate so you keep on track with performing to your up-most!

As you exercise outside and work up your pace, your body continues to sweat, but that sweat evaporates more quickly into the chilly, dry air, making it seem as though your body is losing less water. Drinking water before, during and after cold-weather workouts helps maintain peak performance, protects the body from injury and helps it to stay warm from start to finish. So don’t skimp on imbibing on the H2O!

Make note of this as well: Fat people have less than thin people. Older people have less than younger people. Men have less than younger women. What is it??
It is brown fat, actually brown in color, and its great appeal is that it burns calories like a furnace. A new study finds that one form of it, which is turned on when people get cold, sucks the fat out of the rest of the body to fuel itself. Another new study finds that a second form of brown fat can be created from ordinary white fat by exercise.

A new paper in The Journal of Clinical Investigation by Dr. Carpentier and his colleagues answers that question and more. By doing a different type of scan, which shows the metabolism of fat, the group reports that brown fat can burn ordinary fat and that glucose is not a major source of fuel for these cells. When the cells run out of their own small repositories of fat, they suck the fat out of the rest of the body.
In the study, the subjects — all men — were kept chilled, but not to the point of shivering, which itself burns calories. Their metabolic rates increased by 80 percent, all from the actions of a few ounces of cells. The brown fat also kept its subjects warm. The more brown fat a man, woman or young adult had, the colder they could get before they started to shiver.

Another benefit of exercising in the cold weather is that it makes the heart work harder to distribute blood throughout the body. For an unhealthy heart that struggles to manage the additional stress, this process can exacerbate illness and injury. But a regular exerciser with cardiovascular endurance can make their heart muscle even stronger with these cold-weather sessions, better preparing the body for more strenuous workouts in the future, not to mention other non-exercise stresses in life.

You're going to have a better outlook on your daily life by taking advantage of exercising outside in the colder weather. Cold-weather exercise has the ability to boost a person's mood, thanks to the lack of humidity (which creates that heavy air feeling in the summer months) and the stimulating aspect of the outdoor colder temperatures. As the body works harder to stay warm, the number of endorphins produced also increases, leaving you with a stronger sense of happiness and lightness following a workout in the cold.

So what do you say? Still feeling complacent about yourself as your laying on that couch, or are you having second thoughts and deciding to get off of it, put on some outdoor clothes with wicking ability and get out and giving your heart and cardio system a Run for its money? The choice is yours… But the staff, friends, and cohorts here at  HeartRateMonitorsUSA.com will be out there waiting for you to catch up.

See you on the trail!

Ok, you jumped on the fitness bandwagon and get to the gym when you can, eat healthier and even try to walk/run a few miles every week, along with throwing in a bike ride maybe once or twice a month. Sounds like your doing everything you need to, in order to be healthier right? Well, just how is your heart holding up to all of this?

Today, when your talking with someone about how you’re now exercising, someone in the group will probably lead the conversation to ask what your normal exercise routine heart rate is and if you're reaching your target zone. And you just stand there looking at him/her without knowing how to answer. Mainly because you just don’t know what your target zone or what your heart rate should be. So, what should they be?

The heart rate is one of the 'vital signs,' or the important indicators of health in the human body. It measures the number of times per minute that the heart contracts or beats.
The speed of the heartbeat varies as a result of physical activity, threats to safety, and emotional responses. The resting heart rate refers to the heart rate when a person is relaxed.

While a normal heart rate does not guarantee that a person is free of health problems, it is a useful benchmark for identifying a range of health issues. The heart is a muscular organ in the center of the chest. When it beats, the heart pumps blood containing oxygen and nutrients around the body and brings back waste products. A healthy heart supplies the body with just the right amount of blood at the right rate for whatever the body is doing at that time.

To get an idea of what your heart rate should be, it’s recommended that you exercise within 55 to 85 percent of your maximum heart rate for at least 20 to 30 minutes to get the best results from aerobic exercise. The MHR (can be roughly calculated as using 220 minus your age) this is the upper limit of what your cardiovascular system can handle during physical activity.
For example, if you're 45 years old, subtract 45 from 220 to get a maximum heart rate of 175. This is the maximum number of times your heart should beat per minute during exercise.

When training for fitness, it is important not to put too much strain on the heart. However, an individual needs the heart rate to increase while exercising to provide more oxygen and energy for the rest of the body.

While the heart rate increases as a result of physical activity, an overall decrease in target heart rate is possible over time. This means that the heart is working less to get the necessary nutrients and oxygen to different parts of the body, making it more efficient.

Cardiovascular training aims to reduce the target heart rate. The ideal target heart rate reduces with age. It is also worth noting the maximum heart rate. This demonstrates the full capability of the heart, and it is normally reached through high-intensity exercise.

Exercise is a way to bring down the overall heart rate. The American Heart Association (AHA) states that the maximum heart rate during exercise should be roughly equal to 220 bpm minus the age of the person. As the body of each individual will react to exercise differently, the target heart rate is presented as a range known as the target heart rate zone.

A tool that is available to everyone today to track your heart rate and know where your at in regards to your target zone is to get a good, accurate heart rate monitor that can monitor your exercise activity and let you know just what your heart rate is, both by being active and when your at rest and how much time should elapse in between beginning a new exercise routine.
One such smartwatch is the Garmin Forerunner 735XT GPS Running Multisport Watch
This wrist-based heart rate monitor will track your beats per minutes, and the activity tracker will help you keep a close tab on your calories and sleep throughout the day. It's easy to view heart rate measuring function at the wrist, gives you an actual read on just how well you’re doing.
It also comes with advanced dynamics available for swimming, running, and cycling with stride length, vertical ratio, and more.  It can estimate your lactate threshold, offers a recovery advisor, and VO2 max estimate.

You can never be too careful when exercising not to overdo it! And having a tool like the Garmin Forerunner 735 strapped to your wrist can provide you with some necessary information that you can use to give you a heads up if you're moving into a danger zone. Remember, any type of fitness monitor is only another tool that’s available to you. We always recommend that you stay in contact with your physician on a regular basis for checkups to keep you both aware of any potential danger signals. A good smartwatch like the Garmin Forerunner 735 can give you a heads up about a potential problem that you can act on by getting to your doctor to get it checked out.

So, exercise, do it right and monitor your stats to make sure you and your heart are on the same wavelength!