Yes same experience, but im still learning how to look at this hrv. I started measuring in december. Right now im having this weird phase with low hrv readings and few beats higher morning heart rate even though i feel great (good sleep etc.). For example yesterday; lowest hrv of the week and highest morning heart rate and i felt better than last five days. Had no problem doing my hard session (3h including 90min z3/z4). But i dont know if it’s stupid to do hard workout when hrv is low - what if things start to go down even more now. Now that i think about last three weeks, i have done little more intensity so maybe that’s the cause.
Less than two months of measuring so still learning. I do have found it useful when hrv is too low; i feel horrible on the bike so now i know when rest day is really the best thing to do.
hi @JJon, my view is that if you measure first thing in the morning while awake, you should not see a strong link between these aspects (sleep stages have a strong influence on your HRV as you sleep, but that’s gone when you wake up, see also: https://twitter.com/altini_marco/status/1353639509309714433 and the reply where I show also the morning values).
It is unfortunately very hard to investigate this systematically, given that sleep stages cannot be estimated with sufficient accuracy for such an analysis (you can get ‘total time in deep sleep’ roughly accurate, but you can never know if you woke up in a certain stage - or in other words, we can never be 100% sure that at any given moment you are in a certain stage), while using reference PSG to get more certainty on sleep stages longitudinally is of course problematic for other reasons.
My recommendation given the values you are seeing would be to keep an eye on the longer term trends and not overdo it with intensity. Typically volume is fine, it’s just the intensity that needs to be scaled down to avoid longer term issues (or improve performance, according to these studies: Heart Rate Variability (HRV) guided training to improve performance | by Marco Altini | Medium)
After a hard day i did a restday, my HRV (with HRV4Training) is normal or slightly higher as normal. The day after the restday my HRV is a way lower as normal…
I talked with my acupuncturist about this yesterday. She explained it as a normal body response to exercise stress. The cycle is about 72 hours. In 24 the body is just climbing the hill to recovery. Between 36 to 48 hours it peaks and 72 full recovery. Aligns with why you want at a minimum of 48 hours recovery after strength training. The heart is a muscle.
can anyone recommend the best app to track this on android? i’d be using a polar H10 strap via either BT or ant+ (have samsung s20 ultra). i’ve read great things about both elite hrv and hrv4training. i’m assuming they both track the same metrics. i was initially drawn to elite as it’s claimed to be free but i just read that if you want to sync with any fitness apps there’s an upcharge. hrv4training is $10 in the play store but i believe that’s the full cost up front and there’s nothing additional to sync with strava or tp.
thoughts as to which one to go with? i’d also like to be able to view my data via a pc if possible. i think elite charges for this as well
Ditto. I’ll do a hard workout on Day1 expecting to need/have aan easy or recovery day the following day but wake up, feel ok which my HRV confirms so do a slightly harder endurance ride instead. On day 3 the way I feel and my HRV more often than not tanks. No idea why
I can’t comment on any other Apps but I use HRV4training on Android and can confirm that if you don’t subscribe to the Pro version it is just one upfront cost. The Android app works perfectly although it does lag behind the iOS bit in terms of any development. I suspect because of the added complexity of catering for the many different devices. I also use his HRVlogger for giving a realtime LT1/ Top of Z2 point during workouts. I think he does both them as a bundle at a slightly better rate.
I use HRV4Training (w/iPhone camera or CorSense) and Elite HRV (CorSense) almost every morning. HRV4Training seems less sensitive to my training stimulus and my sleep quality. I watch my sleep quality with a Garmin Fenix5. It’s a bad measure since sleep is not accurately recorded in Health, but the Stress measurement does correlate to my HRV in both apps. I prefer HRV4Training for the most part with the exception of a couple of features Elite HRV provides. I do not exclusively make my training decisions based upon any one number, but will correlate it to how I am feeling and go from there.
out of curiosity, what are the features that elite hrv have that make you keep using it over hrv4training? i’m thinking of using both as well but there appears to be a lot of redundancy between them
Last week I had a recovery week and I noticed something interesting about my heart rate.
In my recovery week, I did three bike rides all at 65% of FTP . I noticed my heart rate was consistently 10 beats higher on my Monday (133bpm average) ride compared to my Saturday ride (5 days later). (approx. 120-123 bpm).
Why would there be such a big difference in heart rate over such a short time frame?
Coming off of a 3 week stint at the medium build plan I felt tired and fatigued. Do your heart rate increase when you are tired and fatigued?
This is the first time I have had the opportunity to observe my heart rate for different sessions, under identical work conditions, and its interesting to see the difference. I am clearly not looking for medical advice, just to see if anyone else have observed a similar pattern?
I use them both. I started some time ago using SweetBeat. I found Elite HRV before HRV4Training. Since I have data there, I’ve kept using it. IT does allow snapshots throughout the day and I have not seen that as an option on HRV4Training. I like the option to take snapshots and open readings before and after meals or in the evening.
On the other hand I REALLY like HRV4Training’s camera option. It seems to work really well and it shows a tracing, which is nice for me since I can see ectopic heartbeats. I want to compare the data for 1-2 months sometime along with notes in my Journal and my Garmin Fenix 5’s Stress measurements.
I’m not sure I’d have both except I had an issue at some point with Elite’s app and then began researching alternative options.
This question is addressed on the blog and they present a reason why. Last week I decided to give HRV4Training another try due to ability to find quick answers to my questions and integration with TrainingPeaks. There is a tremendous amount of information on HRV4Training website.
Thanks. I need to look at the blog. I’m a huge fan of their email newsletter and articles. If I was picking one today without having either, I’d pick HRV4T.
There is a bunch of variables that you’d have to put an extra effort to control like caffeine intake, sleep duration/quality, nutrition, total life stress to be able to compare two data points apples to apples.
For me it takes a few days of recovery to get my HR and HRV to get to a fully recovered level. My resting HR is slowly climbing toward 50ish this week. I’ll take next week as a recovery and it will bottom out in the low 40s on day 4 or so. I’m a just a few days short of 62 year young rider.
So I’d say you’re pretty normal but someone smarter than me may have more science to explain what’s going on. I’d look for longer trends like does your numbers keep returning to baseline after a good recovery period for you. If things don’t, then you got some self research ahead.
Got my COVID shot #1 of 2 Monday. HRV 8.3 Rode Dade+1 before the shot Monday. Tues HRV down but still in the green 7.7, took a recovery day and acupuncture treatment. Wednesday morning HRV even lower (Yellow) 7.6 and HR a few beats higher.
I’m assuming the vaccine is doing its thing and making my immune system work hard.
I have an Apple Watch Series 6. I’ve been testing three different HRV apps to see which ones seem to reflect the reality my body feels to guide my training. All of these are iOS and/or Apple Watch apps. I’m using Today Training, HRV4Training, and Athlytic. My experience is that all three can give you great HRV readings. Today Training is simple, but for me still requires some tweaking to the smoothing and intensity values. HRV4Training has always been solid, but requires you to feed the app with data every morning. Both Today Training and HRV4Training require you to perform a “breathe” session each morning before getting out of bed.
I’ve also been looking into a new app under active development called Athlytic. It is showing serious promise for me. It is automatic and requires me to do nothing as it is based on your sleep HRV values. It is giving me RTT scores pretty close to HRV4Training and seems to reflect my current “feeling”. It also has an exertion score (based on heart rate). This app is under active development so your mileage may vary.
Since I’ve started paying attention to my HRV, I’ve set all sorts of personal bests and have been having the most fun I’ve ever had on my bike in years. I have been EXTREMELY happy with the heart rate sensor on the Apple Watch Series 6. For me, it has been far more accurate than my Garmin Forerunner 935 on the bike which is great.