thank you Oleg, I do not believe that's possible :)
HRV is an overall marker of stress, and as such, it can highlight negative responses, but we cannot discriminate between the type of stressor (e.g. mental or physical). Looking at the data over time, in different conditions, we might be able to better understand which specific stressors have a stronger impact at a given time.
I have been using HRV4training for more than a year now and I am still undecided on whether it is more useful to use it proactively (for example, your HRV is outside normal range, and you adapt your lifestyle or training program) or reactively (you take a day off, or reduce volume or intensity).
I personally believe that the first is the most useful. But I am not sure about the second. There is so much going on that affects your HRV, maybe you slept poorly or had a big party yesterday, but it doesn’t mean you are going to underperform if you train like normal the next day. I must say that I have regretted some days of training like normal when the app told me to take it easier, but I subjectively cannot feel the difference between low, in range and high HRV.
Another thing I noticed, is that if I do strength training alone, without changing training programs, my HRV is mostly flat and 90% of the time it changes due to lifestyle. I am unsure if this is always good. It is important to apply progressive overload in the form of volume or intensity to make progress, and constant HRV means I am just used to it. That does not mean that crushing your HRV is the way to go. So there is a lot of nuance. I do believe that HRV monitoring is probably more important to the endurance athlete, with strength training you can increase stress by adding more sets or going closer to failure, but we are probably not training more than 6 hours a week, and there are no hard and easy days or long days, it is all the same in duration and intensity, only changing the exercises, day after day.
many good points here Gabriel, I am glad to see you have really captured the nuance. I can add one note on your first doubt: it is true that you can always perform even on a low HRV, and that the value might depend on lifestyle related factors, but the idea of modulating load I think remains valid as regardless of the source of the stress, our capacity to adapt / respond positively is limited. Eventually it's not about what we can do that day, but what we should do (to lead to a positive response). See some notes about this, here: https://marcoaltini.substack.com/p/hrv-and-performance - all the best!
Appreciate your post and been using the HRV4training app at the same time as a whoop strap trial. Im considering not going ahead with the whoop due to the cost and discomfort of wearing a device over night. In the past and currently I still track all my workouts with a polar verity sense.
I mainly do kettlebell workouts, and indoor / outdoor cycling for training. For my use case would HRV4training pro be worth it as a substitute to whoop, to gauge training load against my HRV trends? Also, what is the best way to sync workout data with HRV4traning?
thanks! regarding tracking your workouts in our app, my recommendation would be to use Strava, and then read the data automatically in our platform. For cycling, your bike computer can be linked to Strava (or your watch, depending on what you use), while for the indoor workout, you could use the strava app + Verity.
One you have collected a few weeks of data, you can try it for free by logging in here: hrv4training.web.app/ - then you can decide if it's something you find useful :)
Thanks a lot for the reply! Just returned the whoop and sticking to your app with the verity sense. May consider picking up a Coros watch, as its one of the devices that works for the ECG measurement. Appreciate the explanation and looking forward to see how this tracking improves my training and recovery.
My experience with HRV and Strength training is that they play well together. In particular when a training cycle has high levels of central nervous system stimulation, e.g, Heavy squats and heavy deadlift, HRV stability for determining "Am I ready today" or should I rest another day have kept me on track with my training in both cycling and strength work. FWIW - 58 yo male, non-elite athlete.
I found this post & many articles on HRV4Training.com very helpful for me to understand HRV readings & trends on my Oura Ring. As a "train-hard-or-go-home" training type of person, I found that it usually takes 72 hrs (not 48h) for my HRV (on my Oura Ring's reading) to go back to baseline. The time it takes & the changes in HRV are similar to the changes on my soreness level & my RHR. However, cannot find such an alignment with HRV readings on Apple Watch.
I am wondering if it is related to how often does AW measure HRV?
Thank you for the great explanation about applying HRV for strength training.
How is it possible to distinguish a drop in HRV from training stress or "non-training-related stressors"?
For example in the morning after training, I see a drop in HRV and a rise in HR, plus yesterday was a quite busy day at work.
How is possible to distinguish what factors affected HRV?
thank you Oleg, I do not believe that's possible :)
HRV is an overall marker of stress, and as such, it can highlight negative responses, but we cannot discriminate between the type of stressor (e.g. mental or physical). Looking at the data over time, in different conditions, we might be able to better understand which specific stressors have a stronger impact at a given time.
I have been using HRV4training for more than a year now and I am still undecided on whether it is more useful to use it proactively (for example, your HRV is outside normal range, and you adapt your lifestyle or training program) or reactively (you take a day off, or reduce volume or intensity).
I personally believe that the first is the most useful. But I am not sure about the second. There is so much going on that affects your HRV, maybe you slept poorly or had a big party yesterday, but it doesn’t mean you are going to underperform if you train like normal the next day. I must say that I have regretted some days of training like normal when the app told me to take it easier, but I subjectively cannot feel the difference between low, in range and high HRV.
Another thing I noticed, is that if I do strength training alone, without changing training programs, my HRV is mostly flat and 90% of the time it changes due to lifestyle. I am unsure if this is always good. It is important to apply progressive overload in the form of volume or intensity to make progress, and constant HRV means I am just used to it. That does not mean that crushing your HRV is the way to go. So there is a lot of nuance. I do believe that HRV monitoring is probably more important to the endurance athlete, with strength training you can increase stress by adding more sets or going closer to failure, but we are probably not training more than 6 hours a week, and there are no hard and easy days or long days, it is all the same in duration and intensity, only changing the exercises, day after day.
many good points here Gabriel, I am glad to see you have really captured the nuance. I can add one note on your first doubt: it is true that you can always perform even on a low HRV, and that the value might depend on lifestyle related factors, but the idea of modulating load I think remains valid as regardless of the source of the stress, our capacity to adapt / respond positively is limited. Eventually it's not about what we can do that day, but what we should do (to lead to a positive response). See some notes about this, here: https://marcoaltini.substack.com/p/hrv-and-performance - all the best!
Hi Marco,
Appreciate your post and been using the HRV4training app at the same time as a whoop strap trial. Im considering not going ahead with the whoop due to the cost and discomfort of wearing a device over night. In the past and currently I still track all my workouts with a polar verity sense.
I mainly do kettlebell workouts, and indoor / outdoor cycling for training. For my use case would HRV4training pro be worth it as a substitute to whoop, to gauge training load against my HRV trends? Also, what is the best way to sync workout data with HRV4traning?
Appreciate it is a long post.
Thanks
thanks! regarding tracking your workouts in our app, my recommendation would be to use Strava, and then read the data automatically in our platform. For cycling, your bike computer can be linked to Strava (or your watch, depending on what you use), while for the indoor workout, you could use the strava app + Verity.
In terms of Pro: I think it is mostly valuable to appreciate long term trends, regardless of how you track your workouts. In the app, you will see the normal range: https://marcoaltini.substack.com/i/105061914/normal-range-and-detected-trend-in-the-baseline-page and in the web platform, you can also look at data in the long term, with respect to load and subjective data, in a way that can help contextualizing and learning from your physiology (https://marcoaltini.substack.com/p/hrv4training-pro-overview-page).
One you have collected a few weeks of data, you can try it for free by logging in here: hrv4training.web.app/ - then you can decide if it's something you find useful :)
thank you again for your interest and support
Thanks a lot for the reply! Just returned the whoop and sticking to your app with the verity sense. May consider picking up a Coros watch, as its one of the devices that works for the ECG measurement. Appreciate the explanation and looking forward to see how this tracking improves my training and recovery.
Cheers
My experience with HRV and Strength training is that they play well together. In particular when a training cycle has high levels of central nervous system stimulation, e.g, Heavy squats and heavy deadlift, HRV stability for determining "Am I ready today" or should I rest another day have kept me on track with my training in both cycling and strength work. FWIW - 58 yo male, non-elite athlete.
It is a very great read & Thank you!
I found this post & many articles on HRV4Training.com very helpful for me to understand HRV readings & trends on my Oura Ring. As a "train-hard-or-go-home" training type of person, I found that it usually takes 72 hrs (not 48h) for my HRV (on my Oura Ring's reading) to go back to baseline. The time it takes & the changes in HRV are similar to the changes on my soreness level & my RHR. However, cannot find such an alignment with HRV readings on Apple Watch.
I am wondering if it is related to how often does AW measure HRV?
thank you Winnie, and that's exactly right.
The AW provides very noisy, sporadic data points, and I would not really bother with it for this application, unless you use it to take morning measurements via the Breathe app: https://medium.com/@altini_marco/how-to-make-sense-of-your-apple-watch-heart-rate-variability-hrv-data-89bf4a510438
Thanks for sharing! I used to think AW took measurement at a relatively steady state. Will take a look at the post now.