What 1Hz heart rate can — and can't — tell you about your game
One sample per second is rich enough for shifts and recovery, but it's not a lab ECG. The honest limits of the data your watch actually records.
Your watch records heart rate once per second. That's the resolution Over The Boards works with, and it shapes what we can honestly say about your game.
What 1Hz is great at
One sample per second is more than enough to see the big movements that define a hockey game:
- Shift boundaries. The rise into a shift and the fall onto the bench happen over tens of seconds — dozens of samples each.
- Intensity per shift. Where your heart rate sat across an entire shift, not a single peak.
- Between-shift recovery. The shape of the drop on the bench, shift after shift.
- Trends. Game-to-game and week-to-week shifts in your working range.
What 1Hz can't do
It's not a lab ECG. It can't tell you about fine-grained heart-rate variability, it isn't a clinical instrument, and no amount of smoothing turns it into one. Any app that promises cardiac insights from a wrist should be treated the same way we treat a rink "top speed": skeptically.
Why this matters for you
The value of 1Hz data isn't in finding a hidden metric. It's in giving you a long, honest look at the shifts and recovery you can actually feel — so the trend confirms what your body already told you, in numbers you can show your teammates.