I have just started measuring my heart rate variability (HRV) to check my recovery levels. I am constantly trying to find the balance of how often to workout and to combine F1, H1 and crossfit. Recovery and optimal training frequency is a common question from all athletes. This seems to be a really good assessment tool that has good scientific research backing it. I have pasted a quote from ithlete below.
Has anyone else used HRV with their training?
"Monitoring Heart Rate Variability is so much more valuable than just monitoring heart rate.
Heart rate variability (usually known as HRV) is a relatively new method for assessing the effects of stress on your body. It is measured as the time gap between your heart beats that varies as you breathe in and out. Research evidence increasingly links high HRV to good health and a high level of fitness, whilst decreased HRV is linked to stress, fatigue and even burnout.
ithlete measures your HRV, as well as your resting heart rate, every morning during a 1 minute test. After you have built up a baseline over a few days, the ithlete software algorithms compare your daily readings with baseline to determine if any significant changes have taken place. These are reflected in traffic lights for today's training and a chart to help you track trends.
HRV as a tool to monitor overtraining
Simple measures of the small changes in each beat of your heart can provide a wealth of information on the health of your heart & nervous system; such measures are called heart rate variability or HRV. Originally applied to assess the risks for patients who suffered a heart attack, HRV analysis is now becoming a standard tool in sports science research & coaching practice.
Since researchers first found significant changes in the nervous systems of athletes involved in hard training for the rowing world championships (Iellamo, 2002), a number of studies have tried to use HRV as a tool to monitor overtraining. In general such studies show that HRV is much lower in overtrained athletes than healthy ones (Mourot, 2004).
The problem is, when you are overtrained it is too late. It might take weeks or months to get back to full fitness, so what you need is a daily measure to tell you how well your nervous system is doing. Daily monitoring using standard HRV methods have shown that listening to you heart via HRV can not only stop you overtraining but actually make your training more effective. (Manzi, 2009).
The idea is quite simple. Monitor your HRV every morning and train as normal. If your HRV drops significantly, take this as an early warning that you are overloading the system. A small drop is OK as long as you recover. Training is, after all, about stress and recovery and a hard session, especially on top of accumulated fatigue, will lower your HRV.
But if your HRV stays low even with rest you could be on the edge of trouble. In my opinion, using daily HRV to monitor training stress is the best thing you can do to make your training safe and effective. So listen to your heart."
