STRESS = PAIN = STRESS = PAIN PART 9: HEART RATE VARIABILITY

Heart Rate Variability (HRV) is used extensively during elite sport as it can provide an in-depth look at an athletes readiness to perform on any given day. Each player will react to the same stimulus differently so this is a great tool in individualising training loads and intensity for each player.

I use it every day as I’m still competing as a local sportsman and all you need to do is simply download an app (there’s plenty of them nowadays) and take a daily reading upon waking.

As this is geared towards sport performance most of them will give you a reading of “train hard today”, “train, but take it easy” and “take the day off.”

It will establish a baseline score from your daily readings from which it bases it's daily training advice from. Generally if you register a score above your baseline it will suggest for you to train hard that day. If you have a lower reading then yesterday then it will suggest to train, but take it easy. If you’re below baseline or you’ve registered a decreased score 2 days in a row then it will suggest for you to take the day off training.

I think this is something that everybody can benefit from. Even if you don’t exercise, it still gives you an insight into how stress has affected your body and how you’re dealing with it. You can also correlate these periods of less than stellar HRV scores with your work and lifestyle. When you’re on holiday you’ll more than likely test as fresh as a daisy but on that day where you’ve been up til 1am prepping for a huge presentation you have first thing in the morning, then you’ll test badly from poor sleep, high stress and lack of regeneration.

Remember stress in any form affects the body somehow!

Most, if not all of these app’s will also record resting heart rate (RHR) at the same time which is another great indicator to keep track of. Generally an elevated RHR above your baseline will again correlate with times of high stress, poor sleep etc.

As mentioned earlier, high stress can decrease immunity and you probably already know that you normally get sick in times of high (physical or mental) workloads. HRV and RHR readings can actually let you know you're getting sick before it actually happens so that you can be proactive (instead of reactive), making it priority to get extra rest before it gets out of control (bed ridden etc).

The app I use is HRV4Training which is only on iPhone for now.