Recent articles and updates [September 2024]
Heart rate variability, wearables, entrepreneurship, training talk and some ramblings
hi there 👋
I hope all is well.
Here is my newsletter including articles and updates from September 2024. I hope you’ll find it useful and I would like to take the opportunity to thank you for your support.
Please feel free to comment below or in the articles should you have any questions, and I will follow up soon.
Take care!
Heart rate variability (HRV) 🫀
Getting Started with HRV. You’ve got a new wearable and it reports your HRV. You see the number and wonder, is this any good? What does it mean when it changes? In this short blog, I address these questions and give you a few pointers to better understand and (most importantly) use this metric.
Q&A: if my overnight physiology is better does this mean I'm actually better recovered? In this blog I discuss temperature regulation, its impact on HRV, recovery, and how to best assess if our interventions are actually helping.
Q&A: would it be better to measure HRV before sleep? a few notes about protocols, best practices, and actionability of the data we collect, here.
Podcasts and talks🎙️
Sitko Talks EP#31: Marco Altini. From Sebastian’s website: In this episode of Sitkotalks, I had the pleasure of interviewing Marco Altini, one of the world's foremost experts in heart rate variability (HRV) and endurance training. We delved deep into the science behind HRV, discussing its significance for athletes, how it can be used to optimize training and recovery, and its role in overall health and performance. Marco shared his insights on how to interpret HRV data, the impact of lifestyle factors on HRV, and the latest research in the field. Episode here.
HPX Performance Nutrition. Hosted by Sport Ireland Institute in partnership with the National Dairy Council, this years' HPX explores the powerful impact of nutrition on athlete health and performance. I will be speaking on October 10th about wearables and how to make sense of the collected data (remote talk). See here.
Articles 📝
Low-intensity exercise and the stress response. The stress response is much of what I spend my days thinking about, at least in terms of how we might be able to capture it using simple measurements of our resting physiology. In this article, I discuss changes in cortisol and HRV following low-intensity exercise which highlight its potential benefits.
A two-year examination of the relation between internal and external load and HRV in Australian Rules Football. Fergus K. O’Connor and co-authors have used HRV4Training for a few years in team settings and reported part of their findings in their latest article, titled “A two-year examination of the relation between internal and external load and HRV in Australian Rules Football“. While HRV is widely used in individual sports, fewer studies are looking at measures of resting physiology in team settings. In this post, I briefly cover the protocol used and the main findings of Fergus’ work.
Building 🛠️
Our ambassadors’ program for 2025 is now open to applications. If you are passionate about sport and technology and have been using HRV4Training for at least 6 months, you can learn more and apply, here.
Training talk 🏃🏻♂️🚴
Winschoten 50 km: The Only Constant is Change. In this article I cover the training and race report of my recent 50 km personal best in Winschoten, covering a bit of everything from HRV to overtraining and lactate tests, plus training periodization, cross-training, and pacing. I hope you will find some useful pointers in there.
Training log. As the name states, this is just my training diary for this year.
Ramblings 🤌
I turned 40 years old. Some words, here.
A good response to high load typically is a stable or slightly higher HRV. See an example here.
Continuous HRV data and talking. Some data here.
That’s a wrap for this month.
Thank you for reading, and see you next month!
Recent newsletters:
Marco holds a PhD cum laude in applied machine learning, a M.Sc. cum laude in computer science engineering, and a M.Sc. cum laude in human movement sciences and high-performance coaching.
He has published more than 50 papers and patents at the intersection between physiology, health, technology, and human performance.
He is co-founder of HRV4Training, advisor at Oura, guest lecturer at VU Amsterdam, and editor for IEEE Pervasive Computing Magazine. He loves running.
Social:
Twitter: @altini_marco (currently inactive)
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