I have been increasing my training load the last few weeks and have noticed my HRV dropping and RHR raising (Both as measured by garmin 255).
Over about 2 weeks at 10 hr/wk my HRV drops from 72ms avg to 53ms avg and RHR 49bpm to 53-55bpm. Both hrv and rhr have both followed the same trends almost identically (inverse relationship of coarse).
How much of a drop in hrv is considered significant as a signal for overtraining or reducing load?
Graph below shows hrv over 4 weeks, I took the last 4 days as rest days to see the effect, a slow hrv increase but still not enough to bring it to a normal rested level.
I will add that I am new to tri training, so I may just have a very low tolerance for training stress. This is just under a 30% decrease, would it be wise to reduce training load, fully rest until hrv returns to normal, or ignore hrv and just go by feel?
Iām coming off an minor running injury, so Iāve kinda been taking it easy for several weeks. And by easy I mean like 4-5 hr/wk of mostly z2 riding. I donāt think Iāve taken a full week rest for maybe 2-3 months.
Kinda agree HRV can be a bit wonky. If the dotted āOvernight Avgā line is your trend line it does look like youāre responding to the rest days. When you do resume maybe trying lower quantity to keep the engine going while you recover some more. I would ask how is your sleep quality? That seems to have the biggest impact on my score - I get my best scores after a solid, uninterrupted, deep sleep. I wouldnāt say to totally ignore the number but maybe take it with a grain of salt and factor in how youāre feeling.
The only time I saw a trend in my HRV was after a bug. It stayed balanced all the way to the bug, I was then floored for a few days but it remained balanced and only after the 2nd day, and I started to feel better did it become unbalanced. Iāve not really got faith in the metric
Iāve been dealing with the same issue recently. Garmin says Iām strained. But it started exactly after I received my HepB booster vaccine. How long does it take for my body to get back to normal.
