- 1:00 what is HRV (heart rate variability) and how is it relevant to training?
- 2:00 a summary of the parasympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system
- 3:00 the state of the parasympathetic branch allows us to monitor global stress on the body
- 5:30 on the usefulness of trying to quantify training and non-training stresses and the care that must be taken when doing so
- 8:00 factors affecting HRV and the autonomic nervous system: sleep, alcohol, illness, travel, training, work, relationships. But the effects are very individual!
- 12:30 how quickly do we see responses to stressors? Acute response occurs within 24-48 hours. Chronic response takes longer: 1-2 weeks or more.
- 14:45 HRV measurement best practices
- Measure daily, at the same time of day / night, use proven measuring methods,
- 17:30 what can you do knowing your acute and chronic HRV data?
- 18:30 if acute reading is low, then the capacity for more stress is reduced. Marco recommends reducing intensity on that day of training.
- 19:30 a case study in HRV-guided training - where training modification was only made when the HRV baseline (long-term trend) was below normal - demonstrated that this form of training was more effective than traditional programming with no accounting for HRV.
- 21:30 stable HRV is the goal! It is not meant to ‘improve’ over time.
- 23:00 interpreting low acute HRV score on race day. Lower is not necessarily bad.
- 23:30 understanding atypically high acute scores
- 26:15 interpreting chronic HRV data and trends
- 27:00 stable or increasing baseline is a sign that you are coping well, whereas a decreasing baseline suggests accumulation of stress that is not being resolved
- 28:00 coefficient of variation monitors the magnitude of variations between measurements. A high CoV could signal some trouble adapting to a novel training stimulus or life stressor.
- 30:15 a low CoV combined with an abnormally low HRV trend is a sign of a system struggling with global stress and may be a signal for a state of chronic high stress - which, of course, is to be avoided.
- 33:30 is HRV-guided training a substitute for a periodized plan?
- 36:15 is it useful to try to measure HRV during training?
- 38:15 what about live, but not-during-training HRV monitoring like Garmin’s Body Battery feature?
- 42:15 Michael’s struggles with a single daily measurement
- 45:30 body position in testing: all okay so long as the position is the same from one day to the next.
- 46:45 the technology used by HRV4Training
- 50:30 using the Big Data collected by HRV apps for studies and new features
- 55:00 how does the athlete HRV4Training app work and what does it do?
- 58:00 the HRV4Training Pro platform
Learn more about HRV4Training or Marco at their respective websites and follow them on Instagram and Facebook.
Read part 1 of Marco's guide to HRV-guided training on Medium. Then use the links in the article to access parts 2 and 3.