Heart Rate Variability

Pina

 Does anyone have any long term experience with using heart rate variability as a guide for training and recovery. I'm looking at Ithlete. 

russG

Interesting topic...

I've heard of HRV measurements for cardiac patients, but this is the first I've heard of it as an indicator of workout fatigue.  Is it really going to give you more useful information than resting HR, HR after a standardized warm-up, and simply how you're feeling after the warm-up?  I'm skeptical, but to answer your question, I have no experience with HRV as an indicator of simple fatigue, and so I would understand if you're skeptical of my skepticism.

Al Truscott

My initial reaction is the same as Russell's. Then I looked at who is asking the question - Sukhi wants to squeeze every last second he can off of his IM race day time, and is looking under every rock for possible aids. Given the pice tag @ Ithlete, there is little $ risk involved, meaning trying it and discovering no benefit is not a real worry. The risk becomes: what if I do it and it not only doesn't help, but makes me slower? Examples of this type of risk: I get a new saddle, said to be faster, and get a fit, but on race day I find that it makes my back seize up and I have to adandon (happened to Dave Scott when he came back to Kona in early 00's). Or: I'm told a certain nutrition plan will help me with salt intake and getting more calories, thus delaying the onset of cramping and fatigue. Instead, I throw up half way thru the marathon, and walk instead of run a few miles (happened to me in IM season 2012).

The purpose of this, as I understand it, is to use the variations in timing within and between heart beats to more precisely determine how much rest and/or effort is needed/possible in day-to-day workouts. So the risk would be, it acts as a brake on your training, keeping you from developing maximum fitness by telling you you should take a day off when you don't really need to. Or, alternatively, it tells you you should work harder, when, in actuality, there are reasons other than HR response that you should be resting.

Here's my suggestion - give it a try, but don't use it as anything other than a data gathering mechanism for the first season. IOW, continue with your current means of determining when to rest and when to do some extra credit work. Presumably you already have either an explicit or implicit system you've been using in your career as an endurance athlete, including but not limited to things such as: what does the training plan say? what do my coaches say? what is my RPE while working? How fatigued do I feel just before a workout? sleep, nutrition, behavioral changes? What about resting HR, or HR during warm-up., or ability to get to targeted HR during workout? Etc.

See if the system provides you with a different answer than your current methods. If it doesn't, why bother? If it does, consider making changes at some resonable point in time. Or, if you're unwilling to ever take the risk that it might retard your progress, pass on it.

MattAaronson

Sorry to take this a bit off topic -- and btw Sukhi I have no experience with HRV -- I like Al's approach in general. I seem to face a lot of "should I change the way I do X", and am always worried that changing something that is not obviously broken may result in negative impact. But I'm at the point where the low-hanging fruit is gone so changing little things is necessary to pursue incremental improvement. The approach to collect data and trial something to make a better assessment of its likely impact is a good way to go. I plan on doing that a lot this year.

Pina

 Thanks for your input guys! 

@Al, yes for $60 I've ordered Ithlete and will track it everyday over the course of the year. I'm not sold on it either but it should be an interesting metric to have. I'm especially curious to see what happens during the taper period.

I know what I need to work on this year and am focusing on that looking for my greatest ROI.

I'm also paying very close attention to some other metrics. I'm looking at Chronic Training Load (CTL), Acute Training Load (ATL) and Training Stress Balance (TSB). I actually view CTL as a measure of fitness, ATL as a measure of fatigue and TSB as a measure of form.  WIth Form = CTL - ATL, Form is race readiness.

The balance act of all this is to gain the highest CTL (fitness) with the lowest ATL (fatigue). As we train the CTL climbs along with ATL, yet when we recover and taper both of these metrics actually drop. Yet fatigue will decrease much faster than fitness. People believe we actually gain fitness when we taper, physiologically this doesn't make sense either, it's actually impossible. We actually lose fitness during the taper period. But we also greatly reduce fatigue which brings us into form (feeling fresh), making us race ready. The key during taper is to lose as little fitness as possible while clearing all levels of fatigue. This's what makes TSB rise. According to Friel we can get our TSB between 15-25 with having only 10% loss of CTL. I feel that losing 10% of fitness is high. I'm hoping HRV can help me with this too and by arbitrarily throwing in TSS scores for the taper period before the taper has even begun to see what happens with CTL, ATL & TSB. Once I find the perfect balance of TSS points all I have to do is then execute the exact workouts according to those TSS numbers, so I take all the guess work out of my taper. My goal is to have a positive TSB, while only losing 5-7% of fitness (CTL).

Anyways.... just wanted to share my motivation for adding HRV into the mix. After getting injured last year recovery is a big part of the year for me. I'm getting creative with that and again looking to see what happens with HRV as a result. I'll let you all know how it goes over the season. If you have insights from what I've just explained from your personal experience... I'm all ears!