HRV and Picking TR Alternatives

I’m starting to track my HRV using Elite HRV and a CoreSense sensor. Interestingly, at least so far, “HRV” itself doesn’t correlate. However, the Relative Balance and Readiness Score seems spot on. I don’t know if I’ll do anything with this data. But if it keeps correlating well over the next few weeks as I cycle through (pardon the pun) TR hard/recovery weeks… I might use this to pick alternative TR workouts… slightly easier or harder than it proposes, depending on my Readiness Score.

Anyone else doing this?

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I have been tracking HRV (with EliteHRV) for some time now. I haven’t been using the acute HRV and/ or Readiness metrics to make day to day changes but have been reviewing longer term trends to assess how I’m responding to load etc. I’m not quite at the point yet to see the trends enough to make decisions on load but I am starting to see patterns.

Lots of the stuff I have been putting together on this subject has come from the excellent Marco Altini blog (HRV4Training) here: Marco Altini – Medium and also lots of stuff posted on twitter by Alan Couzens here: https://twitter.com/Alan_Couzens

I have been tracking daily HRV, 7 Day rolling average, 60 day rolling average, 7 days CV% (coefficient variation) and RHR in intervals.icu and doing some analysis. Example below for my base period since the start of the season to date.

From this I am starting to see how I am responding. Using a table I put together from Marco Altini’s blog, I would suggest I am generally “coping well with training” but looking at the plots, I did have a decrease in 7 day HRV, an increase in 7 day CV% and a slight spike in RHR after wk8 which was my biggest week to date (845TSS) and my current week is looking like another 850TSS week so will see if I have the same trend again next week…

One of the things I am exploring is the following approach from Alan Couzens which looks at load management via “Readiness” (wellbeing) and daily HRV.

Some good discussion on training with HRV also on the intervals.icu forum here: HRV-Guided Training - Training - Intervals.icu Forum

Just some random thoughts on the topic :slight_smile:

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I’ve been tracking my HRV using a HR strap and Elite HRV daily since Jan 2019. It was prompted by having been very ill for nearly 4 months, which I’m convinced was caused by training hard, underfuelling and not getting enough sleep. I was pretty doing pretty much everyrhing wrong. I don’t go into too much detail with it but I do adapt my training according to my readiness scores. For the past 3 days, my readiness has been 4 so I’ve used Train Now to select endurance workouts in place of my scheduled VO2 Max. I’m looking forward to TR taking HRV and menstrual cycles into account in training plans.

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