- Mornin' Trainiacs!
So, earlier this week, we did a podcast
with Dan Plews, the 2018 Kona amateur champion
who set an all-time Kona course record as an amateur.
Nailed it!
So the interesting thing about Dan Plews
is that he is, in addition to being an awesome athlete,
he is also a sports scientist,
and one of the things that he has been publishing
a bunch of papers on is heart rate variability training,
and this is potentially a, like, four times improvement
better way of training than just saying
alright, well, I'm gonna go really intense
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, have an easier day
Monday, Friday, and then go loner but
less intense Saturday, Sunday.
Like, we're talking a four times improvement over that,
but the issue with it has always been
how do you actually implement it practically,
because we can't all just wake up every morning
and say, oh, well, my heart variability
is good today so what am I gonna do?
We have to have some sort of structure.
Dan Plews helped with that, and that's
what we're gonna talk about today.
(lively electronic music)
Alright, hold onto your butts, Trainiacs,
because it's about to get all sciency up in here.
Don't worry, I'm a Canadian, so I will dumb it down
by necessity because I don't know words
that have more than three syllables.
So HRV training, heart rate variability training,
is the concept of instead of just laying out a typical week
and saying, well, on these few days I do these workouts,
on these days I do these workouts,
on these days I do rest workouts,
HRV training is using heart rate variability,
which is the variation of the time between your heartbeats.
So even though your heartbeat might be beating,
let's just say, 60 beats a minute,
that is actually irregular.
One beat might be 1.05 seconds apart from the previous one,
then .97 apart from the previous one,
then 1.07 apart from the previous one,
and what you want is a lot of heart rate variability.
You want your heart to beat irregularly.
That means it's a good indication that your body
is ready for upcoming workloads.
If it's just beating regularly, just going
thump thump, thump thump, thump thump, thump thump,
instead of thump thump, thump thump,
thump thump, thump thump, thump thump,
that's kind of exaggerated, but beating irregularly
is beating when it needs to.
Thump thump, thump thump, thump thump
is just going through the motions.
That's what happens when it's under a lot of stress
on, say, the treadmill, on a stationary bike when you're
pushing really hard, it gets really regular
because it can't choose when to beat
so it just says, you know what, I'm just gonna beat
regularly, boom boom boom boom boom boom boom,
but we don't wanna live in that state of stress.
So a high heart rate variability when
we're resting is what we want.
Instead of just using that typical week,
we say alright, well, on days where our heart rate
variability is high and we're very ready to workout,
we end up performing more, we do our key workouts,
but on days where our heart rate variability is very low,
we back off, so we wait until we need a rest
to take that rest, and here is what this has resulted in
in several studies, but this is
the one that Dan Plews shared with us.
Training prescription guided by
heart rate variability in cycling.
So what they did in this study, and I will link to it
in the description below for anyone who really wants
to dive into this, and I'm sure I'm gonna say things
incorrectly, but this is the gist of it.
What they did was they did a baseline test
to see what two groups' heart rate variability,
just standard, tends to be, then what they did was they
split the groups and they said alright, this group over here
is going to do traditional periodized training
where their week is laid out to them.
This group over here is going to
use heart rate variability training,
and what they did, instead of just saying alright,
if your heart rate is low this day you are going to rest,
if it's high the next day you are going to go hard,
they took a rolling average of seven days in a row
and if the seven day rolling average,
like the average of your previous seven days,
ended up dipping below one half a standard deviation
of your baseline, then you are prescribed a rest day.
If it was still below after that, you were prescribed
a second rest day to a maximum of two rest days in a row,
and here are the results, here's why this is so interesting.
The heart rate variability group improved their peak
performance output, this is their maximum power potential,
by 5.1% on average, then from an endurance standpoint,
they improved their 40K time trial results by 7.3%
on average over the course of an eight week trial.
Here is the thing, the traditional training group
did not improve significantly after the eight week trial,
and I have seen, probably this is I wanna say the third
study that has shown similar sorts of results
by using heart rate variability
instead of just a standard week.
Gets you thinking, right?
Okay, so how do we actually do this in practice?
Let me show ya.
So I have made a spreadsheet that you can go
and download at triathlontaren.com/hrvtraining,
and that's where we start taking the science
and you can actually apply it to your training.
So what you need to do to start out
is get some sort of a device that captures HRV.
Right now, I'm using the Oura Ring
which does it as I sleep, but you can also use
just your phone if you use an app called HRV for Training.
This is probably the simplest way
to get a recording for your HRV.
What you do is you place your finger over top
of the camera, probably easier with that finger,
over top of the camera, at the same time every morning
immediately after waking up and going to the bathroom,
you measure HRV and then it uses the, there we go,
uses the light and the camera on
your phone to get an HRV measurement.
So whether you're doing it with an Oura Ring,
whether you're doing it with a chest strap,
whether you are doing it with HRV for Training,
there are very simple ways to get an HRV measurement.
What you then do is you take all of those daily
measurements and you put it into this document
that you're going to get at triathlontaren.com/HRVtraining,
and you're going to have to create a baseline.
So for 30 days start entering the readings,
and the readings are going to vary.
With the Oura Ring, it goes from 20 to 100.
On this, it goes from like five to nine.
It really doesn't matter because it's going to
be measuring the same thing but
there is no standard HRV measurement.
So that's why the numbers are going to be different,
but as long as you are using the same measurement tool
all the time, that's what's important.
So you start putting in all of your data,
and how this spreadsheet works is after 30 days,
it's going to calculate, well, after seven days,
it's going to calculate your seven day rolling average,
after 30 days it's going to calculate a baseline for you,
and if you're really interested in what that is,
that is exactly the same baseline as what they used
in that study and it is the average of the previous 30 days,
and then the baseline bottom, like where we start
actually changing our training,
is one half of a standard deviation,
so I've built in a standard deviation calculation,
and then the baseline calculation is the average minus
one half of the standard deviation,
and then what's going to happen is
as you just continue to put in measurements over and over,
it's going to be calculating constantly your
seven day rolling average, and let's say I start
dipping down here for a while, if I really dip down,
there, boom, if I start dipping down,
it's going to eventually give me
a reading that is red on a day,
and if you have a day that's red,
then you back off your training,
because that is less than your baseline,
and don't worry if, like happened here,
I just put in one low number and all of a sudden
something went red down there, that doesn't matter.
What you're looking at is how your seven day rolling average
is every single day, and as long as that seven day
rolling average doesn't turn red,
you go after it and either do a moderate intensity
long workout or a short workout with a lot of intensity,
but as soon as you get a red reading saying that your
seven day rolling average is less than your baseline,
you have to take one day off, and if that
isn't enough, you take another day off.
Days off can be an entire day off
or a recovery swim, a recovery bike,
a really low intensity like zone one
kinda heart rate sorta day.
What I've also built in here that they've said is important
in this study is that every month or so
it recalculates a new baseline for you.
So right now, my baseline is actually quite, quite low
because I had the back injury, because I was traveling
with Kona, my training wasn't going well,
so I have a very low baseline at the moment.
I imagine, after 30 days, it's going to
reset itself and it's going to be higher.
So in that case, HRV is always measuring basically
what my current baseline is, what my current level
of preparation is, and which days
I actually need to take rest.
Hopefully I get like 7% faster.
And now is that critical for you
to incorporate into your training plan?
No, absolutely not.
Most pros don't even do that, but there is so much being
said over the last three years about heart rate variability
with most of the companies talking about it.
Oura Ring, HRV for Training, aren't really necessarily
talking about from the standpoint of alright,
practically speaking, how does somebody implement this,
and if you are thinking about testing out
heart rate variability and you've got the flexibility
to change your training day-by-day,
this spreadsheet is a way that you can do that
and it actually gives you concrete walls
and like structure for how to do that.
So if you do wanna play around with it,
it's very inexpensive to do.
Just grab a phone, HRV for Training app,
any sort of heart rate strap that does do HRV,
heart rate variability, and go
to triathlontaren.com/HRVtraining,
get this spreadsheet, and start tracking it.
I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna start testing it out,
and jeez, you are worked up!
(dog collar jingling) Excited!
Science!
Alright Trainiacs, go to triathlontaren.com/HRVtraining
if you wanna start playing around
with this and have some fun.
Let me know how it turns out for ya, later.