Rest and recovey

I'm amused by my HRV usage...I've only taken 4 readings and so far my lowest score was for this morning. Guess what I had to do yesterday? Stand around giving presentations at work surrounded by executives who'd flown in. I didn't even do my usual morning limbering routine. And I'm 2 points lower on my HRV number this morning! 

Which leads me to the only obvious conclusion - work = stress, training = bliss (good for me) 

Is anyone else getting their highest scores on the days when they feel overtrained? I'll keep watching the scores, but so far, my "most rested" day was on the day I woke up feeling the very worst & knowing I had to not train that day. I'm only 4 days in so I'm curious to see how it goes.
 

After 5 HRV measurements, my baseline is 9.3. I'm quite sure yet if I agree with the suggestions it's been giving but it is my deload. Time will tell. 

I'm a farmer and obviously have no idea how this works, but it seems to me that the first 4-5 numbers you get are pretty meaningless.  Once you get a baseline off those readings I would think your daily numbers will show more.  Also, unless you're a full time athlete, I could see these numbers being more tied to stress/nutrition than training.  Personally the hour or so I spent a day on GB and jogging is my most intense training hour of the day but the other 9-10 hours of daily activities contribute a lot more to my fatigue at the end of the day.  So a day off of training is not nessasarily a "rest day" and I can certainly see where the stress/not fun day @Katherine Zodiaco had would me more taxing than a workout.  

Im interested to see how a couple beers or a big dessert change the numbers, but I'm going to try and put that off a while 

@Ryan Segervall

What type of coffee do you use?  I am not a coffee consumer but what you brought caught my attention.

On 5/5/2017 at 3:07 PM, Étienne Lajeunesse said:

@Ryan Segervall

What type of coffee do you use?  I am not a coffee consumer but what you brought caught my attention.

Just a decaf blend from some local companies. Nothing Fancy. 

There are some very high quality coffee brands out there but out of my budget. 

As for HRV 

I will say the more measurements you get under your belt the more useful it will read. Mine is pretty spot on. Down to 8.3 morning after training 8.7 on morning of training after a days rest. 9.1 after a rested weekend. 

All of this makes sense and usually translates to my mental focus and energy levels that day. 

40 minutes ago, Ryan Segervall said:

Just a decaf blend from some local companies. Nothing Fancy. 

 

There are some very high quality coffee brands out there but out of my budget. 

Ok, but since it's decaf, what's the point to drink it in the end?  What's in there more than a bottle of water for example?

1 hour ago, Étienne Lajeunesse said:

Ok, but since it's decaf, what's the point to drink it in the end?  What's in there more than a bottle of water for example?

about 20mg of caffeine and some antioxidants. Boost mental focus but keeps tolerance low so you can actually wake up in the morning without needing a cup of coffee. Also is driving some other pathways in the body that help with fat mobilization due to small amount of caffeine. 

To each to their own. Regular coffee is fine, I just like to keep my tolerance low by drinking decaf then doing a detox every 3-4 weeks

It's been 4 days now measuring my HRV and my baseline is 7.8

I had a 7.6 this morning (following a rest day).  Yesterday morning had the same score (following again a rest day but was pretty active).

I have to learn all about this app to fully understand it.

1 hour ago, Étienne Lajeunesse said:

It's been 4 days now measuring my HRV and my baseline is 7.8

I had a 7.6 this morning (following a rest day).  Yesterday morning had the same score (following again a rest day but was pretty active).

I have to learn all about this app to fully understand it.

 

I think I have 6 days now and my baseline is 8.0.  I rested sat and had an 8.6 yesterday, another rest day yesterday and 7.6 today.  I did go to a graduation party yesterday and had cupcakes and pizza for dinner so I could see that contibuting to not being over the baseline, I guess, really have no idea

1 hour ago, Malcolm Watters said:

I think I have 6 days now and my baseline is 8.0.  I rested sat and had an 8.6 yesterday, another rest day yesterday and 7.6 today.  I did go to a graduation party yesterday and had cupcakes and pizza for dinner so I could see that contibuting to not being over the baseline, I guess, really have no idea

I suppose we'll really see the meaning of all of this in a long term way.  What do you think @Ryan Segervall?

8 minutes ago, Étienne Lajeunesse said:

I suppose we'll really see the meaning of all of this in a long term way.  What do you think @Ryan Segervall?

Yep, no matter what, it's very interesting.  Maybe we shouldn't take 2 days of rest?  It's interesting that they ask questions about travel and alcohol.  I don't drink a whole lot these days. I play golf on Thursday's and may have 2-3 beers and maybe 2-4 on a weekend grilling out but rarely over that, but I'll be interested long term if a couple beers routinely shows a difference in my recovery points or like I said yesterday a poor nutrition day with little excersize

I too got now one week's measurements. My baseline is 8.5 right now. I checked all the graphs, and it's fun for me to see that there is not much population like me doing this thing (female over 50)  :-) 

@Ryan Segervall, how do you log your workouts if you do multiple a day? I will probably figure out the best way to do it with time, but I suspect you have tons of experience with it now. When I tried to do the "multi-sport", it has options that I don't do. So I just enter one sport (often Bodyweight training, which I think is GST) and then add the time of my activities. Say I did 1:15 hour GST and 30 minutes pole fitness, I just wrote 105 minutes total. I also walk 1.5 hour a day, but I don't count it as "training", it's more of a lifestyle. So I don't  add the walking, just the "real" training.  How do you log multiple sessions per day, if you have?

Curious also how you, new HRV4training users, decided to do this… 

6 minutes ago, Malcolm Watters said:

may have 2-3 beers and maybe 2-4 on a weekend grilling out but rarely over that, but I'll be interested long term if a couple beers routinely shows a difference in my recovery points or like I said yesterday a poor nutrition day with little excersize

I definitely feel a worse recovery if I drink alcohol… which at this stage of my life is maybe one beer a month  :-) maybe even not. I chose not to drink, because I feel better and train better and recover better. Same with nutrition. I eat really healthy all the time. Maybe for you, the bad day of nutrition "improved" a little bit by not exercising. But I suspect if you trained every day and ate poorly and/or drank, you would not be able to handle that for too long. It's a great thing for you to observe and analyze in the app. Curious to see you future observations. 

1) data will become more and more useful as you gather more data. mine in the beginning wasnt the most useful. however now its pretty spot on. As you gather more data the software is able to calculate more measurements and find correlations between self reported data (sleep quality, alcohol, stress levels, injury, ect. ) My best advice for everyone just starting out is to not get to caught up in trying to analyze things just yet. I would keep doing your normal routine for next 3 weeks and then from there you can begin to play around with variables and see how things change. 

2) I am still in my beginning stages of training so I never 2 training sessions a day. I only log my strength training days and stretch sessions usually are logged as rest or very low intensity training. These are all on separate days tho. I am not sure how to log multiple, but I would priorities logging the high intensity stuff over the lighter less strenuous stuff. This just helps with data calculations in the software and finding how you are adapting to your training. For instance later down the road you might see on those days you really pushed it your fatigue goes way up and you need about 48 hours for that fatigue to drop bellow your fitness levels, which is green light to train hard again. 

Hope this helps

Thanks @Ryan Segervall, that makes sense. I'll add the time for my intense activities (GST, pole, etc) and ignore all my walking and riding bike etc. My GST stretching I log in as "yoga"… front and middle split are not as strenuous, but my thoracic bridge feels often tough, especially the elevated hip taps and stuff… and especially because I have my intense pole class the same morning. So that one I log in as training, because it feels intense. I'll play around with it. I guess as long as I understand what my tags and descriptions mean so I am consistent with it, that's what counts. 

This graph is by far the most valuable. strength training 3 days a week appears to allow optimal recovery time and makes sure super compensation is happening on a weekly basis. This means more gains. 

Other things I have learned from my data. 

1) Currently going through finals week at college right now and the caffine intake has been high. I have noticed my recovery points have not been as high as they usually are. This is a no brainer as caffine is going to interfere with sleep quality. my take away, is that for optimal recover should limit caffeine for the morning and avoid that  3pm dosage. 

2) when my elbows flare up ( medial epicondylitis) my recover points drop. This tells me on those weeks where things are soar and irritated I need to drop the ego and back off a little to give my body more time to recover & rebuild. 

3) on days I go out with my college friends HRV drops confirming that alcohol is going to get in the way of my recovery. But I have noticed on days where I only have 1-2 drinks (which is most of the time I go out) HRV isnt impaired that much. 

So all of these conclusions seem pretty much like no brainers but looking at HRV recovery points serves a good purpose of red light yellow light green light. 

- If HRV trends remain relatively consistent then there is no need to freak out, but if things drop and remain low then thats a sign that hey listen to your body, you probably need more rest. 

- with my current life style I am able to recover optimally form my training and make good progress in the gym. This is confirmed by the data and how I feel. 

- When I am not making progress first thing I do is check out my trends and look for abnormalities, and try to find adjustments that I should make in order to boost my recovery and allow my body to continue to adapt. Say ah this week my caffeine consumption was really and HRV recovery points werent as high as previous weeks, this tells me 1) when I get out of this week drop my caffiene consumption cause its interfering with recovery, this will help prevent plateaus. 

4 minutes ago, Suzanna McGee said:

Thanks @Ryan Segervall, that makes sense. I'll add the time for my intense activities (GST, pole, etc) and ignore all my walking and riding bike etc. My GST stretching I log in as "yoga"… front and middle split are not as strenuous, but my thoracic bridge feels often tough, especially the elevated hip taps and stuff… and especially because I have my intense pole class the same morning. So that one I log in as training, because it feels intense. I'll play around with it. I guess as long as I understand what my tags and descriptions mean so I am consistent with it, that's what counts. 

If it feel strenuous or like your working harder than just walking around and being a human then I would log it for sure. 

@Suzanna McGee I will log days that I go for long hikes and stuff, cause those get quite aerobic 

In the name of science, I have been disregarding the app's suggestions. It has not backfired on me yet...but deload is over now

8.8 is the lowest score I've been given, and this morning I got it for the second time. The app of course suggests I reduce intensity since my baseline is 9.2. I'll proceed as scheduled, go big, and let you all know if I go down in flames 

So you can see that over this weekend my HRV actually declined. This was due to increased Caffeine and possibly stress levels. Adjustments I made on monday to try to boost my recovery

1) took a nap that was a little over an hour

2) limited caffeine to just a small dosage in the morning so when I went to bed I was tired and not wired. 

this seemed to help as HRV recovery points this morning was 8.7-9.2 (took several measurements)

Data trending positively and I feel ready to push it hard in the gym today and strive for some PR's. 

1 minute ago, Everett Carroll said:

In the name of science, I have been disregarding the app's suggestions. It has not backfired on me yet...but deload is over now

8.8 is the lowest score I've been given, and this morning I got it for the second time. The app of course suggests I reduce intensity since my baseline is 9.2. I'll proceed as scheduled, go big, and let you all know if I go down in flames 

Go for it!  

2 hours ago, Suzanna McGee said:

I definitely feel a worse recovery if I drink alcohol… which at this stage of my life is maybe one beer a month  :-) maybe even not. I chose not to drink, because I feel better and train better and recover better. Same with nutrition. I eat really healthy all the time. Maybe for you, the bad day of nutrition "improved" a little bit by not exercising. But I suspect if you trained every day and ate poorly and/or drank, you would not be able to handle that for too long. It's a great thing for you to observe and analyze in the app. Curious to see you future observations. 

Yea I didn't mean to imply that I always eat like that.  Although I would say diet is a limiting factor in my progression, it's not bad.  I eat pretty clean most of the time but will have a few meals mixed in that aren't the best.  I'm not going to be the dad that tells his 6 year old I'm not eating pizza with her once and a while.  

i agree the fun us t worth the pain with drinking these days, haha at 45 I'd prefer to feel good the next day, but really a couple beers in a 2 hr round of golf doesn't really have a noticeable affect on the next days activities.  

I need to take some time to understand all of this, currently I don't have enough data to see all this progress.

By the way,  does the suggestions are pretty accurate when starting or get better over time?

Hello, your postings are very helpful. I tried to upload my HVT below. It's fairly boring except why are my little peoples laying down?!! I'm not doing pilates for crying out loud!