I
have recently decided to update my blog after purchasing and moving in to my
first house. Everyone tells you that moving house is up there with the most
stressful things you can do, but I wasn’t so convinced. Well that opinion certainly
changed and it’s all thanks to the iPhone app I use, called ithlete. ithlete monitors
heart rate variability (HRV) and should be done every morning upon awaking. HRV
is a
relatively new method for assessing the effects of stress on your body. Anyway in
the final week of me renting, my HRV was rock bottom (≤55 and was displaying
Red) for the whole week. I initially didn’t think that much about it, but interestingly
once I moved in and after my first night in my new home my HRV bounced straight
back to my normal values. This therefore really fills me with confidence on how
useful daily HRV monitoring is, ensuring that I’m fully recovered, both
physically and mentally before I head out and train again. I would definitely recommend this app to anyone who wants an objective measure of how your responding to your weekly and monthly block of training.
Now
for the science stuff about ithlete
Measurement of heart rate variability (HRV) for use in
monitoring training and recovery involves analysis of the heart's beat-to-beat
variation as you breathe in and out. By accurately measuring the time interval
between heartbeats, the detected variation can be used to measure the
psychological and physiological stress and fatigue on the body during training.
Generally speaking the more relaxed and unloaded (free from fatigue) the body
is, the more variable the time between heartbeats. HRV data can indicate the
impact of fatigue due to prior exercise sessions, hydration levels, stress and
even the degree of performance anxiety, nervousness or other external stressful
influences. Research evidence increasingly links high HRV to good health and a
high level of fitness, whilst decreased HRV is linked to stress, fatigue and
even burnout.
ithlete measures your HRV, as well as your resting heart rate,
every morning during a simple 1 minute test, whilst wearing a HR monitor. During
the test you breathe deeply & relax, so that you minimise the effect of
external stressors on the HRV index and focus on what your body is telling you
about the impact of your training. After you have built up a baseline over a
few days, the ithlete software algorithms compare your daily readings with
baseline to determine if any significant changes have taken place. These are
reflected in traffic lights for today's training and a chart to help you track
trends.
Simple measures of the small changes in each
beat of your heart can provide a wealth of information on the health of your
heart & nervous system; such measures are called heart rate variability or
HRV. Originally applied to assess the risks for patients who suffered a heart
attack, HRV analysis is now becoming a standard tool in sports science research
& coaching practice.
Since researchers first found significant
changes in the nervous systems of athletes involved in hard training for the
rowing world championships (Iellamo, 2002), a number of studies have tried to
use HRV as a tool to monitor over training. In general such studies show that
HRV is much lower in over trained athletes than healthy ones (Mourot, 2004).
The problem is, when you are over trained it
is too late. It might take weeks or months to get back to full fitness, so what
you need is a daily measure to tell you how well your nervous system is doing.
Daily monitoring using standard HRV methods have shown that listening to you
heart via HRV can not only stop you over training but actually make your
training more effective. (Manzi, 2009).
The idea is quite simple. Monitor your HRV
every morning and train as normal. If your HRV drops significantly, take this
as an early warning that you are overloading the system. A small drop is OK as
long as you recover. Training is, after all, about stress and recovery and a
hard session, especially on top of accumulated fatigue, will lower your HRV.
But if your HRV stays low even with rest you
could be on the edge of trouble. In my opinion, using daily HRV to monitor
training stress is the best thing you can do to make your training safe and
effective.
Thanks to ithlete for the blog content
Thanks to ithlete for the blog content
