Here is some more data and analysis from a nationally ranked high school sprinter (Junior) that I have using ithlete. Please note that the sprinter trains primarily with his sprint coach. I work with him roughly 3 days/week on mobility, restoration, etc. He was an ideal candidate for monitoring HRV as he is an extremely motivated and dedicated athlete and there was no doubt in my mind that he could handle the daily measurements. The data stops in early January because he somehow broke the HRV receiver I gave him. A new one has been ordered recently I’ve been told. This data collection is primarily for observational purposes since I do not control or manipulate his training as mentioned above.
November
After 1 week of using ithlete, I had him start using the comments section and sleep score.
His resting heart rate was higher than I expected. I had him perform his measurements standing but in hindsight I should’ve had him do them seated based on his RHR.
HRV average is mid 70’s which is what I expect from an anaerobic athlete. Still would expect his HR to be at least in the high 60’s in standing position.
Clearly he stays up super late on weekends and sleeps in late. Been on his case about this.
First Half of December
HR/HRV average remains consistent. Coping with training well.
Race day on 12/7, hit a PB in his part of the relay. Not a hard race, treated as practice.
Reports of back soreness that persisted long enough for him to seek treatment (documented in next table).
Christmas Break – Second Half of December & Early January
This last section of data is from his Christmas break. Interestingly his HRV average drops and his RHR increases. I attribute this to the change in routine (off of school), staying up late regularly, etc. I also notice changes in my HRV when my routine is interrupted. The body likes consistency.
Things appear to be going well though as he seldom gets below baseline scores (amber).
Race day on 1/6 and hits a PB on 60m.
Given that this athlete is still young and taking advantage of “newbie” strength gains, I would expect him to hit PB’s relatively consistently on the track. Based on his trend, fatigue was never really an issue. More training may have been well tolerated.
I’d like to get him to start using the training load feature too now to get a better idea of how hard his workouts are (perceptively).
As I try and further my understanding of the seeming incomprehensible autonomic nervous system I try to simplify the role HRV may play in monitoring athletes. There is one main issue I’m having; I don’t yet fully grasp the ANS (does anyone?) and therefore I still have a ton of unanswered questions.
I’ve noticed that there are some extremely intelligent people who are strong advocates of HRV usage as a monitoring tool. I’ve also noticed there are equally as intelligent people who are very skeptical and even doubtful of its efficacy and applicability. I’m doing my best to understand both sides of this argument. The best I can do to contribute to this discussion (at the moment) is draw attention to research and offer personal experience.
It’s been a while since I’ve posted and discussed some of my HRV trends so today I will do this as well as share some observations a colleague of mine has made at McMaster University.
Below is a screen shot of my HRV trend from the last 30 days:
Horziontal Blue Line = HRV Baseline
Vertical Purple Bars = sRPE (absence of these indicate no training)
White Lines = Day to day HRV scores
Training structure has been as follows:
Monday – Squat
Tuesday – Active Recovery
Wednesday – Bench Press
Thursday – Active Recovery
Friday – Deadlift
Saturday – Off
Sunday – Off
Strength workouts range from an RPE rating of 7-9 while the low intensity “recovery” days range between 3-5.
Observations:
Much of what I’ve seen is consistent with what I documented in this post so I won’t discuss these in too much depth again.
Normally my HRV will be at or above baseline after a weekend (no training). In the first weekend you see my HRV dropped quite a bit Monday morning. I assume this is because I was away that weekend and I spent much of Sunday in the car and then was frantically trying to get caught up on things once I got home before Monday.
I trained at an sRPE of 8 on Monday and as expected another drop and a red indication for Tuesday. Active recovery typically will bump HRV back up the next day however Tuesday night I unknowingly went to sleep with my friends cat hiding under my bed. Around 2am I got a startling wake up as the animal tried to snuggle with my face. It took me nearly 2 hours to fall back asleep after. HRV that morning is another red and I feel like crap. I take a deload day on Bench (sRPE 7), sleep well and HRV comes back up the next morning.
Things remain consistent during the week shown in the middle of the trend. Moderate dips in HRV in response to sRPE 8’s with returns to baseline after low intensity days. HRV is high after a restful weekend.
The following week I start doing a little more work in my workouts (more heavy sets) and therefore a higher sRPE rating (of 9). Along with higher amounts of soreness and perceived fatigue I saw larger dips in HRV the following day. On Friday (deadlift day) I keep things conservative due to previous lower back injuries and perform an sRPE of 8 and see less of a drop in HRV the next day. I’m happy to report that the back has been feeling good and I have started deadlifting again recently. I stopped deadlifting for a while as I was experiencing pain during the lift (no surprise it was an underactive multifidus) Video below of a recent deadlift.
HRV is high after a restful weekend. sRPE of 9 on Monday (squat) of the last week shown on the image and I again see a larger dip in HRV (today). Will do some low intensity stuff later on after work.
Collaborating with Steve Lidstone at McMaster University
Since moving back to Canada I’ve been working on getting an HRV project going with Steve Lidstone, the head strength coach at McMaster University (a huge rival of mine in my football days). After some e-mail discussions I sent Steve an ithlete to try out. After a few weeks Steve sent me this update;
“I’ve been monitoring my HRV for 3 weeks now every morning.
I started off with HRV at 88 with a HR of 60bpm.
In times of poor sleep (we have 2 kids ages 2 & 4) or high stress my HRV has plummeted to 55 and resting HR of 79.
It is also interesting to me as I am in my 5th week of post concussion symptoms. When my HRV is low my symptoms are escalated.”
At this point we’re looking at getting two of his teams started with ithlete (about 8 players in total). Should make for some good data to discuss.
About two months ago the new version of iThlete was released with some really cool new features. These new features included;
The ability to rate your sleep on a score of 1-5
A comment section that allows you to make notes about the previous day’s events, stressors, etc.
The ability to input training loads that appear on your HRV trend chart so you can see how your HRV responds to your training
The ability to export data to drop box
Here is a video that shows the updated features;
The most significant addition in my opinion is the ability to track your training loads with your HRV trend. This really puts into perspective how stressful your workouts are. There is no specific method or formula that you have to use for your training load data. There are several methods that have been used in research to quantify training load, some of which I’ll describe below.
Training Impulse (TRIMP) – this is calculated using training duration, maximal heart rate, resting heart rate and average heart rate during the session
Session Rating of Perceived Exertion (RPE) for Endurance Athletes – Session RPE score x duration of exercise in minutes (for endurance training)
Session Rating of Perceived Exertion (RPE) for Strength/Power Athletes – Session RPE score x repetitions
*See Borrensen & Lambert (2009) for a more elaborate review and explanation of the above methods.
Training Volume – Weight Used x Sets x Reps
Other methods exist, but these tend to be the most commonly used. In deciding how I would monitor my training I simply decided to use an RPE of the session, however, not like the method listed above. Instead, I simply rated my workout on a scale of 1-10 based on how hard, or how much effort I put into the session. I would consider volume, strain, RPE of my main sets, how hard I pushed my assistance work and so forth. I realize this isn’t the most valid or reliable measure of training load, but it’s been working well for me.
To give you an idea of how I grade my workouts, see below. This will make interpreting the charts I attach below of my trends much easier.
Session RPE of 10 – 3 or more top sets for my main exercise, RPE of 9-10 for each set, high volume of assistance work (3+ sets to failure), complete exhaustion by workouts end. I have yet to perform a 10 workout and likely never will.
Session RPE of 9 – 2-3 top sets for my main exercise, RPE of 8-10 for each set, moderate volume of assistance work (2-3 sets not to failure), considerable fatigue at end but not exhaustion.
I’ll typically perform these workouts when HRV is above baseline
Session RPE of 8 – 1-2 top sets for my main exercise, RPE of 8-9 for each set, low to moderate volume of assistance work (1-3 sets not to failure), moderate fatigue at end
I’ll typically perform these workouts when HRV is at the lower end of baseline
Session RPE of 7 – 1 top set for main exercise with an RPE of 8 or less, low volume of assistance work with reduced weight, minimal fatigue at end.
I’ll perform this workout when HRV is below baseline with an amber indication (deload)
Session RPE of 5 – No main exercise performed, light weight, moderate volume
This is what I’ve been doing on Sunday’s to hit delts and arm’s since I don’t do much work for them during my main sessions on Mon-Wed-Fri
Session RPE of 3 – Active recovery work for 20-40 minutes. This can be in the form of light jogging, sled dragging, circuits, etc.
I try and perform these workouts the day after each workout to facilitate recovery and maintain an aerobic base level of conditioning
Session RPE of 1 – Leisurely walk for 30-40 minutes. This can hardly be described as a workout but it’s more than a zero so I will log it when it happens.
This happens sometimes instead of an active recovery session.. usually when I’m visiting my folks as we’ll take a lot of walks.
So as you can see there is no sexy formula (I’ve never been a math guy anyway), but I’m pretty consistent and I’ve noticed some fairly common trends in my recovery (based on HRV). Below I have attached a couple screen shots of my HRV Trends with Training Load (Session RPE ala Andrew Flatt). The purple bars reflect training load (9 being the highest you’ll see) while the horizontal trend is my HRV daily fluctuations with the blue line representing my baseline.
Observations:
See here and here for previous posts about observations I’ve made from monitoring my HRV
A session rated as 9 is almost always going to cause a pronounced drop in HRV the following day. This is why I don’t typically train on consecutive days.
If circumstance causes me to train two days in a row, I’ll use a Session RPE of 8. My HRV will usually drop moderately after the first workout out and drop even more after the second one.
During the passed 2.5 months I experienced approximately 16 instances where my HRV dropped enough causing an amber or red indication. The majority of these occurred the day after a session and therefore fell on a recovery day.
There were 5 days in which a red or amber indication fell on a training day and therefore out of the 2.5 months, I only deloaded for a total of 5 days. In the past I would typically take a week off after every 3 week cycle however with my new system of training I simply deload on a given day when my HRV is well below baseline.
The lowest dip on the graph (around 04/20) I purposefully trained harder than normal on a below baseline day (amber indication) to see how my body would react. The next day my HRV dropped even lower with a red indication. This, as well as other incidences from the past solidifies my stance that training hard when HRV is low delays recovery. You’ll see that it takes several days until my HRV gets back up to previous levels. This negatively effects future training sessions. In my opinion, it’s much better to reduce loads for one day to improve the effect of your following sessions as opposed to just training through a bad day and ruining the next few sessions. This is also what has inspired me to stop deloading at pre-determined times for pre-determined periods. There certainly is value in doing this as the body needs time to recover and adapt to weeks of hard training. However, with HRV monitoring, it seems (atleast to me, for right now) that you can get away with just reducing loads on days when HRV is low.
I’m presently the leanest I’ve ever been at my current body weight. I’m about 232lbs at 17%. The leanest I’ve ever been is 14.8% at 218 while the heaviest I’ve ever been was nearly 270lbs when I played collegiate football (I’m the ogre in purple below from back in 2006).
I’m presently the strongest I’ve ever been at this body weight.
I’ve been able to remain injury and illness free since using HRV to guide my training. I no longer experience any tendonitis in my elbows either which used to be a big problem.
Final Thoughts:
I realize that I may appear overly biased towards HRV’s usefulness in my writing. However, I feel that I’ve been training long enough to know when something’s all in my head (placebo) or when it’s actually making a difference. The science supports HRV (see here) and my experience up to and including the present also seems to support it. The whole concept of planning training in advance and sticking to it no matter what is not as effective as manipulating training on a day to day basis according to an objective measure of your body’s current adaptive capacity. This doesn’t mean you can’t have a general plan, it just means that you need to be prepared to make adjustments along the way to ensure the quickest and safest way to reach your training goal. HRV provides, in my opinion, the simplest and most accurate information to allow you to do this. I will continue with this method of monitoring and training since it has been so successful. I’ll be sure to provide another update in a few months.
HRVtraining 