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- Welcome back to another triathlon training explained
powered by Training Peaks.
- Well, this week we are looking at heart rate variability,
what it is, how to use it, and most importantly,
how it relates to recovery.
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- As athletes our main aim is to get stronger and faster
and we do that through a combination
of stressing our body through training,
and then allowing it to rebuild and get stronger
through recovery.
- Yeah, that's right, but knowing if your body has
adequately recovered from the previous training
isn't always that easy.
But, you can use tools such as Training Peaks
training stress score, you can use your resting heart rate,
then subjective measure is obviously important,
so how you feel, looking at your sleep -
the quality and the quantity of it.
And all of that helps paint a bigger picture
for you to analyse your training for you and your coach.
- Well yeah, those are really useful tools,
but then heart rate variability,
or better known as HRV for short,
is a far more accurate measurement
of that overall stress on your body and mind day to day.
And, most importantly, it's a clear indication
of whether you're ready to do hard sessions that next day.
- Well, we could explain a little more about HRV,
but it's probably time we went and heard
from an expert.
So earlier I spoke to Simon Wegerif,
the Director of HRV fit to ask him exactly,
what is HRV?
And how as athletes we can use it to help with our recovery.
Hi Simon, thanks for joining us.
If you could start by telling me what
is heart rate variability?
- Yeah, sure, so HRV is a relatively new method
for assessing the effects of stress on your body.
It's actually measured as a time gap between
your heartbeats that varies as you breathe in and out.
Research evidence increasingly links high HRV
to good health and a high level of fitness,
whereas decreased HRV is linked to stress,
fatigue, and even burnout.
- How do you actually measure HRV?
- Yeah, sure, so a simple one minute measurement
every morning on waking up can tell you how recovered
you are and therefore how hard you can train that day.
- Okay.
And what tools can you use for that?
- Yeah, so, typically you would use an app
and a sensor.
And it's important to use a high quality sensor.
So that could be a chest strap,
or it could be a validated finger sensor.
- Okay.
And finally, once you've got these results,
what are you actually looking for in them?
- If your HRV drops significantly,
you should take this as an early warning
that you're overloading the system.
A small drop is okay, so long as you recover.
Training is after all about stress and recovery.
And a hard session,
especially on top of the cumulated fatigue,
will lower your HRV.
But, if your HRV stays low even with rest,
you could be on the edge of trouble.
Using daily HRV to monitor your training stress
is the best thing you can do to make your training
most safe and effective.
- Well thank you very much for that, Simon.
That was really interesting.
It's certainly a very useful tool.
Now I've actually used HRV quite a lot in the past,
and I understand, Heather,
you've been using it a bit as well.
- Yeah I have started to use it.
I found that really insightful.
But I think we should have a bit of a chat
about it on our run.
If you're still up for it.
- Yeah, of course.
Shall we still do that hill-rip session, yeah?
- Um... I'm not sure I can really do hills today.
My heart rate variability is looking a little bit too high.
It's in the red,
so I think it's just going to be an easy jog for me.
Looks like I'm on my own!
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Well for the last couple of months
I've been taking my heart rate variability every morning
which basically just involves using this finger sensor,
popping it on my index finger on my left hand.
And it's all about consistency,
so I do it as soon as I get up,
sit on the edge of the bed,
rest my hand and I just have to take steady breaths
for 55 seconds.
At the end of it, I get a score,
and this morning's score is 78,
which is a little bit low,
and it's come up as red.
So that signifies I need to have a slightly easier day.
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- Oh, hi!
- Hey, how was your run?
- Yeah, good.
I'm just actually uploading it right now,
so I'm gonna look at my reps.
- Oh cool.
I mean hopefully I'll be back in the green tomorrow
so I can nail my next session.
- Yeah.
Shame not to have you with me.
- But I know that you've used it a lot in your training
and you know how to listen to your HRV
in the bigger picture,
but how did you use that when you were planning
your training and recovery?
- Yeah, well actually the reason I started
using HRV in the first place was because I was
struggling with my health.
I've had glandular fever in the past,
and I just want to make sure I don't end up
digging that deep dark hole again.
So I started using it in the lead up to
Ironman 70.3 South Africa,
and I've actually got some really interesting
data here, so actually around Christmas time,
maybe a few mince pies and drinks were to blame,
I'm not sure, but on the 27th of December
I got really good example,
my HRV dropped really low.
And I probably ignored that first thing,
which was silly of me.
I went out and did a run session, and yeah.
It didn't feel great.
I was meant to do a swim that afternoon,
I just had to count that.
- Okay.
- So I semi listened to it,
but at that point probably a bit too late.
But that meant that I recovered the next day,
you can see my HRV has pinged back up.
So I kind of nipped it in the butt early
and just kind of got rid of it.
And yeah, so that was a good example.
Another really good example was when
I flew out to South Africa,
went out a couple of weeks before the race,
and about three or four days after the flight,
HRV dropped again.
Which isn't totally unusual,
that's quite common.
But it's just a really good example.
It just shows, actually this is the effect on the body,
this is the stresses from travel, the sleep,
and the time difference and all that sort of stuff.
I also understand you've been using it,
and so talk me through it.
- Well, I mean I must admit I am finding it
still fairly early, so don't have the,
you know, the baseline is maybe still a bit more fluid,
but I struggled to listen to it.
I think that's my biggest problem.
I've seen the odd red day, but I'm like:
"Oh it must just be a discrepancy"
because I've not been that consistent with when I take it.
So yeah, it's trying to find out about the bigger picture
but I was actually having a chat
with someone called Dan Peluse
who has a PHD in the topic
and he also coaches some top, pro athletes,
and he was mentioning how important it actually is
to look at your HRV, but also look at the bigger picture
and not just flag out, "Oh gosh, there's one red day".
How else do you feel with that?
- I use it during training blocks,
kind of a chronic way rather than in a cute way,
- Okay.
- So once you've got the devices
they give you
like a score a day
and it'll say, "you should train on these days".
And that's been proven there's been a number of these,
there's been another one that's just been brought out
by a Spanish group that showed that
training based on your day-to-day caro variability
can be more effective,
but personally I still think,
you could run the risk of missing a session
when you don't actually need to,
if you're just going on HRV alone.
- Okay.
- Um, so the way I use it,
is I will look at
basically with trends.
So what I showed you with my PHD is that
if you're doing a heavy training block,
and you're a triathlete,
predominantly you're an endurance based athlete,
most of your training therefore is at a low intensity,
you expect it to see HRV kind of increase
during that training block,
and it will come up,
and it will come up where normally you would be,
and then as you take it out to your competition
it will come back down to base levels.
And that's the sign that,
if it's increasing gradually,
as you're doing a heavy, hard training block
and you're really pushing the limits,
that to me is a sign that your overreaching
but you're in a punctured-
punctual capacity.
- Okay.
- Not in a detrimental capacity.
And that's what I would look for.
So if everything's going on
and it's increasing gradually, I'll say that's great.
But that doesn't mean to say though that
when HRV is at its highest
and that person performed on that day
they would have a great race.
That wouldn't be the case,
and often they can perform very badly.
And if you look in a lot of the literature,
who have done those studies,
when the HRV is at the highest,
they generally will perform badly.
But once it-
once they do a bit of a taper,
it will come back down to baseline levels.
And that's the point of where they'll have their
peak performance.
- Well that was a great insight there from Dan,
and just goes to show that it's a really valuable tool
for measuring our stresses from day-to-day.
And in conjunction with some of those other markers
to really try and find that balance
between training and recovery.
- Yeah, I completely agree and I've found it
just really interesting looking at this
for the last couple of months,
and you know, seeing those patterns.
And I think it's given me the confidence
to actually listen to the signs of my body
that it's trying to tell me
about the overall stresses.
And sometimes, it just takes seeing an amber or a red
on the HRV app to actually say,
"It's okay to back off training a day or two,
and come back hard the next day."
- Yep. It's all about that consistency.
Now if you'd like to see more videos from GTN,
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And staying on this topic,
if you are interested in a little bit more about recovery,
and over training we've done another
triathlon training explained video on that right here.
- Yeah. And if you'd like to see our triathlon
versus a pool stroke,
basically Mark's stoke versus Heather's stroke,
then you can see that by clicking just down here.