Tracking Recovery
Using a heart rate or wrist strap monitor to measure your heart rate variability (HRV) is a great way to track how your body is responding to your training and life stress. Many of you already do. For those of you unfamiliar with HRV it is a measurement that gives us an objective number of how much stress our body is under. We can use this number to train optimally by knowing when to go hard when we’re under less stress and when to go easy because we are under more.
Tracking our HRV gives us a measurement of how much stress our body is experiencing but not how to achieve an optimal HRV measurement! HRV is not set in stone. Everything we do has an impact on the stress we experience (which is literally our HRV measurement) and our ability to recover from training. In traffic we can get angry and scream. This will add stress to the body. We can also check the traffic ahead of time and leave earlier if we have to. Then we can practice breathing techniques in the car knowing we will not be late. Not much stress there. But I digress.
A while back I stumbled upon this article that can be used to improve recovery. I recommend reading it. Using the chart below the author’s goal was to get to a recovery score of 1.0 every day. Obviously this isn’t an exhaustive list and it isn't one size fits all. There is science that says some people don’t need 8 hours of sleep and that a little alcohol doesn’t have a negative effect on recovery. Even a “proper diet” is individual. But I believe the overall idea is great. Enough sleep is probably the most important on the list and deserves to have the highest score. Foam rolling and stretching are good choices because they not only help with recovery but they can improve your power into the pedals and prevent injury.
I used this number system for a while to help get into a good routine. After a while you will understand what works for you. Even just the evaluation of your habits can be very beneficial. Are you doing enough to recover and de-stress? Are you limiting the things that hinder recovery and increase stress?
