Practical intro to training with HRV
Introduction
HRV is short for Heart Rate Variability and is a metric that can give insight to the fatigue and state of recovery level of an athlete.
There are different ways and different metrics that all compute HRV, I will not be explaning the math in this article, but the seemingly most popular HRV computation methods are SDNN and RMSSD.
HRV is influenced by the sympathicus and parasympathicus (explained below). The sympathetic nervous system prepares the body for the “fight or flight” response during any potential danger. On the other hand, the parasympathetic nervous system inhibits the body from overworking and restores the body to a calm and composed state.
I’ve found Elite HRV to be the easiest HRV measurement tool that was free and worked with my generic BLE/ANT+ heart rate strap. You should use a heart rate strap over any wrist based measuring devices as they are not as accurate. I am not affiliated with Elite in any way, there are some paid features in the app ( and they do sell their own devices) but I’ve found for simple measuring and logging the free version to be enough.
Disclaimer: This article does not warrant any medical advice of any kind. Please consult medical personal if you are experiencing any signs of medical distress.
If you want more literature on incorporating HRV into your training regime you should check out: alancouzens.com , https://twitter.com/altini_marco and https://twitter.com/Alan_Couzens
Identifying your “comfort” zone
Everyones baseline HRV is different, mine for example is a lot lower than the average. To establish your baseline HRV you should take multiple readings over a week (5–7 days). Consistency is key, which means you should take the following factors into account:
- same time (your natural biological clock, the circadian rythm, affects the reading aswell)
- in the same position (ie. laying down, sitting, standing up)
- same “background” stress, no work/study deadlines which cause you immense mental stress
- same nutritional stress (drinking a double espresso 10 min before your reading will affect it)
- deep breathing can also affect your reading, try to breath normally as to not disrupt the baseline
- high intensity training will definetly also affect your baseline, so try to avoid it by measuring your baseline during a rest week (no hard intervals or otherwise “aerobic system stressing” exercise)
Above you can see that I’ve identified the light purple band to be my ideal HRV state. As you can see above I try not to spend many days below or above my baseline, and that I’ve learned to get a feel how my HRV responds to my training, in part due to using my very advanced training decision flow chart.
You should also note that many of these outliers are caused by mental stress. Stressors such as travel can also impact HRV:
https://twitter.com/alan_couzens/status/1333510649410842624
HRV/RPE training decision diagram
Above you see my HRV/RPE training decision diagram, basically saying that you should only train hard if your HRV and subjective feeling give you the green light.
If your HRV is classifying you into a recovering state there is no point stressing your body any further and let it recover to your baseline; and if you’re not feeling well by your subjective judgement it is likely that your training will not be of high quality.
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