Cateye MSC-2Dx > Reviews > Don't do it unless its got a..

Author's product rating:   

Advantages:	Cost and ease of use
Disadvantages:	You got to learn not to trust it with you life

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

If your wearing a wrist strap. Why? Most people choose a wrist strap type heart monitor in fact they can cause a lot of trouble. Take this challenge Place your watch on your wrist a heart level – your blood pressure will drop. Now shake it only slowly goes up doesn’t it. Even worse lower your wrist take a new reading then lock your wrists at right angles (pull them back to wear you can’t bend them much) OK. Your reading should now have gone up again.

Now try the same with a chest strap. Totally different yes! I myself use a wrist strap device its what I could afford at the time and to be honest I still probably couldn’t afford a chest strap. If you use one of these you’ve got to be aware of all the little oddities, your not measuring your blood pressure direct (infact that would really hurt) what you are doing is measuring pressure in a limb. It’s just not that accurate. A chest strap is more central to the heart it measures arterial flow near the heart and gives a better impression of actual blood pressure. I have ridden with one of these on and the trace is a lot more stable you can trace the route you’ve ridden watching as you hit a hill and your pressure rises.

Ways to improve the use of a wristwatch BP monitor are to keep it for use in recovery. These watches eat batteries there not a toy for using on your way into town to watch for an increase (not if there any good anyway). Most watches take several measurements, taking an average some even go to the extreme of inflating micro cuffs to monitor pressure change (most accurate). This means there using a lot of power. If you keep you watch as a watch until you’ve done say 30 minutes exercise then set it to monitor recovery. This requires you to know your usually heart rate this does vary so don’t stress if yours is different to a friends. The watch is used to moitor the time taken for your heart rate to drop back to its norm, if your super human this could take as little as 40 seconds, using this as a guide you can watch as your time falls and your fitness improves..

Go on get fit – I tried and I’m still trying!!! LOL

Eatcha