Heart Rate Variability

Last post we touched on Heart Rate Variability or HRV and how to get yourself an optimal reading by paying attention to your recovery techniques and habits. HRV is a number that can tell you how well recovered you are from the previous days’ training and life stress. When we train we schedule rest days, weeks and off seasons to recover. We can predict when you might be fatigued based on how hard your training has been in the previous days. What is harder to predict is life stress, bad nights of sleep, work problems, relationship stresses, pandemic problems, sickness, and the list goes on. It is well known that periodizing (work:rest) your training gives you more gains and HRV can be used to periodize even better.

You’ll see there are tons of ways to measure your HRV with a google search. You can use a wrist strap type device or even your phone’s camera and light. They say these ways are validated and can give you good data but if you ever experience a very off HR reading with these devices chances are your HRV reading will be off as well. I personally trust something you probably already have more than these two ways - a Bluetooth heart rate monitor strap. I use this app on my phone with my wahoo HR monitor strap. All of these apps and devices track other information as well and it can get complicated. At the end of the day it’s going to tell you if you are recovered and give you a green light to go with that day’s training or it will tell you you’re a little fatigued and should limit your training/intensity on that day. If it is telling you you are fatigued and you have a tough day scheduled you may consider moving that training to tomorrow. If you wake up tomorrow and your HRV is saying you’re recovered and ready then you can crush your workout then.

One thing to know is that even though you could download the app and be ready to measure right away it takes a bunch of days for the app to establish your baseline to give you suggestions. It is very easy to do and will give you the protocol that they suggest. For me I wake up in the morning, reach over for my HR strap, put it on, open the app and connect, then hit start and relax. You usually can set how long you want to measure for. I chose two minutes. After two minutes I plug in a few bits of information and then I have my reading for the day. Less than five minutes. Here is an example of what I might see. It is saying I can proceed as planned so I am recovered and ready for the day!